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A HOUSE PARTY WITH 
THE TUCKER TWINS 


By 

NELL SPEED 


Author of “ The Molly Brown Series ," " The Carter 
Girls Series," “At Boarding School With 
the Tucker Twins," etc.> etc. 


With Four Illustrations 
by 

ARTHUR O. SCOTT 



NEW YORK 

HURST & COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 


Copyright, 1921 

BY 

HURST & COMPANY 


Contents 


L 

Maxton .... 

. . 


7 

II. 

The Country Store 

. 


19 

III. 

Engaging in Mercantile Pursuits 


35 

IV. 

Dee Tucker Makes a Sale 

. . 


51 

Y. 

The Human Fly 

. , 


63 

YI. 

“BigMeetin’ ” 

. . 


78 

VII. 

The Beason Why . 

, , 


96 

YIII. 

The Circus 

. . 


113 

IX. 

The Performance . 

. . 


128 

X. 

The Ghost of a Ghost . 

. . 


140 

XI. 

The Picnic 

. . 


148 

XII. 

The Shopper- Boon 

. . 


165 

XIII. 

Tanglefoot . 

. . 


185 

XIY. 

A Younger Son 

. 


203 

XY. 

Sleepy Wakes TJp . 

. . 


219 

XYI. 

Things Happening 

. 


231 

XYII. 

More Things Happening 

. . 


246 

XVIII. 

The End of an Eventful Day 


259 

XIX. 

Plans for the Future . 

. 


271 

XX. 

A Letter from Annie Pore to Page 
Allison 

283 

XXI. 

A Letter from George 
Page Allison . 

Massie 

TO 

296 

XXII. 

A Letter from Page Allison to the 
Tucker Twins 

300 


5 



A House Party With the 
Tucker Twins 


CHAPTER I 

MAXTON 

There may be more fun than a house-party, 
but I doubt it. Certainly I, Page Allison, have 
never had it. What could be more delightful 
than to spend two weeks in a beautiful old 
country home with such a host as General Price, 
and to have as fellow guests all the girl friends 
you care for most in the world, — to say nothing 
of some of the male persuasion that at least you 
don’t hate? 

Harvie Price had been promised this house- 

party by his grandfather as reward of merit, and, 

like most things earned by hard labor, it proved 

to be worth the work expended. The Tucker 
7 


8 


A HOUSE PARTY 


Twins of course were there, Mary Flannagan, 
Shorty Hawkins, George Massie (alias Sleepy), 
Wink White, Jim Hart, and Ben Raglan, whose 
other name was Rags. There were two men from 
the University whom we did not know before, but 
it did not take long for us to forget that they were 
new acquaintances. They fitted in wonderfully 
well and a few hours found them behaving like 
old and tried friends. Their names were Jack 
Bennett and Billy Somers, and both of them 
hailed from Kentucky. There was a new girl in 
the party, Jessie Wilcox. She wasn’t quite so 
easy to know as the new boys. 

I always feel like crying when I think of dear 
little Annie Pore’s connection with that house- 
party. She was of course the very first person 
Harvie asked, the one he wanted most. I think 
in his mind the party was given to Annie, and 
when Mr. Pore with characteristic selfishness and 
stubbornness refused to let her go, it was a blow 
indeed. 

His plea was that he needed her to keep the 
store for him. He had hired a clerk after Annie 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 9 

went to boarding-school, and owing to his grow- 
ing business, had kept the boy on through vaca- 
tion, but on the eve of the house-party had seen 
fit to get rid of him, having sent him on an un- 
asked for and undesired holiday. 

“ I found it out only this morning,” said 
Harvie gloomily. 

He had come to meet us at the landing, most 
of us having arrived by boat from Richmond. 
He was doing his best to look cheerful, feeling 
that a cloud must not be cast over the entire 
party because one member could not be there. 
He said he felt he knew me well enough to speak 
out on the subject of Mr. Pore, and speak out 
he did. 

“ But has your grandfather tried to persuade 
him to let her come? ” 

“No! You see Grandfather is a great be- 
liever in State’s Rights, and he carries his theories 
down to the individual. He says that Mr. Pore 
is a wrong-headed father but it is his own affair 
and he refuses to interfere. He takes the stand 
that he has no more right to dictate to Mr. Pore 


10 A HOUSE PARTY 

how to run his household, than Massachusetts 
had to interfere in our own little matter of slav- 
ery here in Virginia, back in the sixties. ,, 

“Poor Annie! We shall have to work out 
some kind of a scheme for her. I’ll tell Mary 
and the Tuckers. I am sure we can get the 
tiresome old Englishman to come around some- 
how.” 

“ I wish I thought so, but I tell you that Mr. 
Arthur Ponsonby Pore has never been known to 
change his mind. Besides he is leaving to-day 
for Richmond to be gone several days.” 

That is often the way with persons who have 
not much mind to change ; they seem to have none 
to spare ; but Mr. Pore was a cultivated, learned 
gentleman, — surely he was amenable to reason. 

Price’s Landing was a quiet little wharf al- 
most hidden hy the overhanging willows. It took 
the boat only a moment to drop one mail bag and 
take on another, or to do the same by the occa- 
sional passengers. It seemed hardly worth while 
to go through the motions of landing for such 
small traffic, but Harvie assured us that in water- 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 11 

melon time or when tobacco was being shipped 
they were a very important trading point, one of 
the busiest along the James. 

The village was about an eighth of a mile back 
from the landing and it looked as though not even 
watermelon time could wake it up. There were 
two stores, Mr. Pore’s and a rival concern; a 
blacksmith shop, sprawling far out in the road; a 
schoolhouse; three churches; a post-office; and 
four residences. 

“ I’d like to stop and have all of you see Annie 
now, but Grandfather is expecting us and per- 
haps we had better come back later on,” said 
Harvie, who was driving one of the vehicles sent 
to meet us. 

The road to Maxton, the Prices’ place, skirted 
the village and then went directly up quite a steep 
elevation. The house was built on top of the 
hill commanding a fine view of the river. The 
lawn sloped down to the water’s edge where one 
could see a very attractive boat-house and several 
boats riding at anchor. 

“ Lovely ! Lovely ! ” we exclaimed. 


12 


A HOUSE ^AETY 

“ I’m mighty afraid^L’m going to run down 
that hill and jump in the water,” cried Dum. 

“ Well, hills are certainly made to run down 
and water to jump in,” declared one of the new 
acquaintances, Billy Somers, who was standing 
on the springs of the vehicle in the rear holding 
on by the skin of his teeth and the back seat. “ I 
bid to do what you do.” 

The mansion (one could not call it just plain 
house) was a perfect specimen of colonial archi- 
tecture, red brick of a rich rare tone with a great 
gallery across the front, the roof of which was 
supported by huge white pillars. The front door 
was a marvel of beautiful proportions, line and 
detail. A great ball might have been given on 
the porch, or gallery, as it is called in the South. 
Indeed, a sizable party might have been held 
on each one of the broad stone steps that led to 
the lawn. Only a very long-legged person could 
go up or down those stairs without taking two 
steps to a tread. 

A house like Maxton is very wonderful and 
beautiful but somehow never seems very home- 


WITH THEXTUCKER TWINS 


13 


like to me. Every time you go in and out of your 
front door to have to tackle those stairs would 
take from the homey feeling. Now at my home. 
Bracken, you are closer to Mother Earth and not 
nearly so grand and toploftical. 

Standing on the gallery to greet the guests 
were General Price and his maiden sister Miss 
Maria, the general tall and stately and Miss 
Maria short and fat. It was easy for the brother 
to look aristocratic and dignified, in fact he could 
not have looked any other way, so deserved no 
credit; but for the sister to look equally so was 
a marvel. Her figure reminded me of Mammy 
Susan’s tomato pincushion, a treasure I had been 
allowed to play with in my childhood. She was 
quite as round in the back as the front and her 
waist was like the equator: an imaginary line ex- 
tending from east to west. Her face was in keep- 
ing with her figure, round and fat, but through 
those rolls of flesh the high born lady looked out. 
Her voice was very sweet and the hand that she 
extended to us was as white as snow. She must 
have been about seventy years old, but thanks to 


14 


A HOUSE PAKTY 


her rotundity there were no wrinkles on her pink 
and white face. Of course she was dressed in 
black silk and old lace! How else could she have 
been clothed? 

The general would have served as a model for 
the make-up of a movie actor in a before : the-war 
film. The Tuckers and Mary and I decided later 
on that we felt just like a movie as we went up 
those grand broad steps with our host and hostess 
at the top. 

The hall carried out our feeling of being on 
the screen. 

“ My, what a place to dance ! 55 whispered Dee 
to me, but General Price heard her and smiled 
his approval. He was dignified himself but we 
were thankful he did not expect us to be. 

“ You shall dance here to your heart’s content, 
my dear. Many a measure has been trod in this 
hall.” 

Dee looked a little depressed at being expected 
to tread a measure. That sounded rather 
minuetish to the modern ear. We wondered 
what he would think of the dances of the day. 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 16 

Maxton was laid out in the form of a cross 
with two great wings, one on each side of the hall. 
The girls were lodged upstairs in one wing, the 
boys in the other. Downstairs in the boys’ wing 
were the parlors and smoking room and General 
Price’s chamber and office; in the girls’, the din- 
ing room, breakfast room, sewing room, chamber, 
linen room, storeroom, Miss Price’s chamber 
and her small sitting room where she directed her 
household. There was a basement with more 
storerooms, pantries, a billiard room and a 
winter kitchen, but in the summer an outside 
kitchen was used. All of these things we found 
out later on a tour of inspection with our hostess. 

The great hall ran through the house and the 
back door was exactly like the front. Thanks to 
the lay of the land, however, there was not quite 
such a formidable array of steps. It seemed 
much more homelike in the back than the front. 
From the rear gallery one stepped into a formal 
garden, gravel paths, box hedges, labyrinth and 
all. 

“ Oh, ain’t it great, ain’t it great? ” cried Mary, 


16 A HOUSE PAETY 

dancing up and down the waxed floor of the great 
bedroom she and I were to occupy. Dum and 
Dee Tucker were put in the room with the other 
girl, Jessie Wilcox. If Annie could have come 
she was to have been with Mary and me. 

“ I’ve got no business calling it great, though,” 
she said as she stopped prancing, 44 when Annie 
can’t be here. What are we to do about it, Page 
Allison? ” 

44 Let’s call Tweedles in consultation. They 
can think up things.” 

Tweedles were very glad to come. Miss Wil- 
cox, who had motored over to Maxton several 
hours ahead of us, had already taken possession 
of the room and had begun to unpack her many 
fluffy clothes. Miss Maria had introduced all of 
us to our fellow visitor and had graciously ex- 
pressed a desire that we should "ke good friends. 
We were willing, but it remained to be seen 
whether the stranger would meet us half way. 
She was a beautiful little creature with dark eyes 
and hair. Evidently she was very dressy or she 
would not have had to take up two double beds 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 17 

and all the chairs with her clothes. She seemed 
to have no idea of making room for the Tuckers 
nor did she make any excuse for spreading her- 
self so promiscuously. 

“ She needn’t think I am going to move them,” 
said Dum. “ If they aren’t off my bed by bed- 
time, I’ll just go to sleep on them. I wish we 
could come in with you girls.” 

“ Of course that would never do,” declared 
Dee. “We must stay where Miss Price put 
us.” 

“ Maybe Miss Wilcox will turn out to be fine,” 
I suggested, hoping to turn the tide of Dum’s 
disapproval. 

“ Fine! She’s too fine. I wish you could see 
her fluffy ruffles. But this isn’t thinking up 
something to do about poor little Annie. My, I 
wish Zebedee could have come! ” 

We all wished the same thing, but since he 
couldn’t come we felt we must think up some- 
thing for ourselves. 

“ He could have talked old Ponsonby Pore 
into letting Annie come, I just know,” said Dee. 


18 


A HOUSE PARTY 


“ Maybe we could do the same thing/’ I sug- 
gested. 

“ Harvie says nothing will move him.” 

“ Well, one thing sure, we can go to see Annie 
and he can’t drive us out, not after he has visited 
us at the beach. He’ll just have to be polite to 
us.” 

“ Can’t she come up in the evening? Surely 
she must stop keeping store sometimes,” asked 
Mary. 

“ Country stores never close. At least the one 
near us never does. They might miss the sale of 
a box of matches or a stick of candy. I used to 
think, when I was a little girl, that I would rather 
keep a store than do anything in all the world. 
I talked about it so much that Mammy Susan 
got right uneasy about me.” 

*“ Well, ITarvie and Sleepy are blue enough 
about it, so we must cheer up,” said Dee. “We 
are to be here two weeks and if we behave real 
well maybe they will ask us for longer, and surely 
in that time we can make that old stickinthemud 
come around. Zebedee could think up a way in 
a minute.” 


CHAPTER II 


THE COUNTRY STORE 

The Prices had the right idea about entertain- 
ing a crowd of young people: that was to let them 
entertain each other. If a dozen boys and girls 
can’t have a good time just because they are girls 
and boys then there is something very dull about 
them and the combination is hopeless. There was 
nothing dull about this crowd gathered in the 
hospitable Price mansion. Harvie was too well 
bred to let the disappointment about the non-ap- 
pearance of one guest make him neglect the 
others. Poor George Massie was the one who 
could not conceal his feelings. Annie was the 
first and only girl he had ever cared for and now 
he sat, a mountain of woe, consuming large quan- 
tities of luncheon as though the business of eating 
were the only solace in life. 

“ Wake up, Sleepy, the worst is yet to come! ” 
teased Rags. 


19 


20 A HOUSE PAETY 

Sleepy only groaned and dismally accepted 
another hot biscuit. The funny thing about 
Sleepy was that he was so in love with Annie that 
he did not at all mind being teased. 

“ I am going down to see Annie right after 
luncheon. Don’t you want to go too? ” I whis- 
pered to Sleepy who was next to me. 

“ Sure! ” 

“We are trying to think up a plan by which 
we can get her hateful old father to let her join 
us here.” 

“ Brute! ” 

“ Don’t you think the girl is pretty, sitting 
next to Wink? ” 

Miss Wilcox had plunged into a flirtation with 
that budding young doctor, placed on her right, 
not forgetting to turn to her left quite often to 
include Jack Bennett in her chatter. 

“No! Like blondes best! ” 

Miss Wilcox looked up quickly. I was almost 
sure she had heard Sleepy. She glanced quite 
seriously around the table, regarding each girl 
intently. Certainly there were no decided 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 21 

blondes there except Mary Flannagan, whose 
hair was red, and even the best friends of dear 
old Mary could not call her beautiful. The 
Tucker twins were more brunette than blonde, 
Dum’s hair being red black and Dee’s blue black. 
As for me, Page Allison, I was neither one thing 
nor the other. My hair was neither light nor 
dark and my eyes were grey. She need not look 
at me so hard. I wasn’t the blonde that Sleepy 
liked best. 

Farther acquaintance with Jessie Wilcox ex- 
plained her concern over Sleepy’s remark. She 
was a very nice girl just so long as she was “ it,” 
but she could not brook a rival of any sort. She 
must be the center of attraction, admired by all, 
praised by all. The minute she felt that there 
was someone who was considered more beautiful 
than she was, could dance better, sing better, do 
anything better, that minute she was a changed 
being. 

Her previous visits to Maxton had been very 
delightful as she had always been praised and 
petted to her heart’s content. Both General 


22 A HOUSE PARTY 

Price and his sister were devoted to her and she 
was ever a welcome visitor. Her grandfather’s 
home was about ten miles from Price’s Landing, 
and whenever she came from New York to see 
him she must spend part of her time with the old 
people at Maxton. Harvie admired her very 
much, as who would not? She was beautiful, in- 
telligent, very quick-witted and charming. He 
had never seen her with any other girl except her 
best friend, who on one occasion had been at 
Maxton with her, and this friend, being hope- 
lessly plain and rather slow of wit, but served as 
a foil to the little beauty. 

After overhearing Sleepy’s announcement 
about blondes, she looked at me so steadily that I 
began to blush. I was suddenly very conscious of 
my tip-tilted nose and of the added toll of 
freckles that the summer always exacted from it. 
I wondered if anyone else was noticing the al- 
most disagreeable expression of her usually sweet 
countenance. 

I was glad when Miss Maria arose as a signal 
for us to leave the table. 


WITH THE TUCKEE TWINS 23 

“ Make yourselves at home! ” the general said 
in his hospitable way. “ Maxton is yours to do 
with as you please. There are horses in the 
stables for any of you who want to ride or drive ; 
there are boats on the river ; there are swings on 
the lawn; the tennis court is in condition for 
matches if you care to play. All I ask of you is 
not to fall off the horses or let them run away 
with you and kill you ; and not to tumble into the 
river and drown.” 

“ That seems a reasonable request,” I laughed. 
“ How about falling out of the swings or beating 
each other up with tennis rackets? ” 

“ Oh, well! I must not put too many re- 
strictions on youth,” he said, pinching my 
ear. 

Jessie looked at me again rather severely and 
once more I felt mighty freckled. 

“ Let’s get a rig and go see Annie,” suggested 
Sleepy. 

“ All right! Tweedles and Mary want to go, 
too.” 

“ Let’s get in ahead of them,” he pleaded. 


24 


A HOUSE PAETY 


“Come on, Page!” shouted Dum. “We 
want you in a set of tennis.” 

“ Now I was just going to ask her to come for 
a row,” cried Dee. “ Wink and Jim told me to 
engage you. They have gone to see about the 
boat.” 

“ Sorry, but I’ve got a date with Sleepy.” 

“ Humph! Miss Allison seems to be rather in 
demand,” said Jessie to Jack Bennett. She said 
it in a low voice but I heard quite distinctly. 

“ Yes! They say she is the most popular girl 
at her school.” 

“ Oh, is that so? I can’t see the attraction.” 

“ Well, she must have it because girls like her 
as well as the fellows. They say Dr. White is 
terribly smitten on her.” 

“ Absurd! ’ 

I quite agreed with her. The sooner Wink 
White stopped hypnotizing himself into think- 
ing he was in love with me, the better I would 
have liked it. Of course every girl likes to have 
attention, but I thought entirely too much of 
Wink to be pleased to have him looking at me 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 25* 

like a dying calf. He was such a nice boy, so 
good looking, so clever, so agreeable, — except 
when he was alone with me. Then his whole na- 
ture seemed to undergo a change. I dreaded be- 
ing left with him and usually managed to avoid 
it. He was my fly in the ointment of this house- 
party. I did not at all relish having this young 
Kentuckian state it as a fact that Wink was in- 
terested in me. Jessie Wilcox was welcome to 
him if she could persuade him to transfer his 
affections. 

Sleepy and I skimmed away in a spruce red- 
wheeled buggy with a young horse that evidently 
liked to be moving. 

“ Fierce about Annie! ” he said. “ I’d like to 
wring that old duffer’s neck.” 

“ I hope he has gone before we get there, 
then,” I laughed. “ If Mr. Tucker could only 
get hold of him, I bet he could bring him around.” 

Mr. Pore had not gone, however, when we 
drew up at the cross roads where the country 
store stood. He was engaged in trying to sell a 
large rake to a farmer, while Annie was busily 


26 


A HOUSE PABTY 


employed in measuring off two yards and three- 
quarters of unbleached cotton for the farmer’s 
wife and then computing the amount due when 
the cotton was worth eight and two-third cents a 
yard. She completed the calculation just as we 
came in. 

How glad she was to see us ! Mr. Pore seemed 
pleased to renew my acquaintance, too. He gave 
only a formal greeting to Sleepy but shook my 
hand in what he meant to be a cordial way. The 
fact that I was part English and that part of me 
came up to his idea of social equality, made him 
look upon me as desirable. He had not forgotten 
that my mother and his wife had been friends in 
England. He honestly felt that there were no 
Americans who were his equals. General Price 
might be almost so, but not quite. He saw no 
reason why his beautiful daughter should not 
spend her young life weighing out lard and meas* 
uring calico for negroes, but every reason why 
she should not demean herself by mixing socially 
with any but the highest. 

Mr. Pore’s store was like every other country 


WITH THE TUCKEB TWINS 27 

store except that it was perhaps a little more or- 
derly, not much though. Order in a country 
store seems to be impossible. The stock must be 
so large and so varied to suit all demands that 
there never is room for it. I have never seen a 
country store that was not crowded. How the 
keepers of such stores ever take stock of their 
wares is a mystery to me. Perhaps they never 
do, but just go on buying when the supply gets 
low, and selling off as they can, putting money in 
the till until it gets full and then sending it to the 
bank. Usually they run their affairs in a hap- 
hazard manner and their books would defy an 
expert to straighten out. No matter from what 
walk of life the country storekeepers are drawn, 
they are all more or less alike, whether they are 
younger sons of the nobility as was Mr. Pore or 
elder sons of the soil (with much soil sticking to 
them) as was old Blinker, who ran the rival em- 
porium at Price’s Landing. They always have 
more stock than they have store, and their books 
usually look as though entries had been made up- 
side down. 


28 A HOUSE PAKTY 

The Pores’ store had shelves stretching from 
one end to the other, down both sides and reach- 
ing as high as the ceiling. On these shelves were 
piled dry-goods of all grades. and material, lamps, 
shoes, harness, hardware, canned goods of every 
description, crackers, soap, starch, axle grease, 
false hair, perfume, patent medicines, toys, paint 
brushes, brooms, tobacco, writing paper, china 
and glass ware, jars, pots and pans, pokers, base- 
ball bats, millinery, overalls, etc., etc. 

The things that were too tall for the shelves, 
like Grandfather’s clock, consequently stood on 
the floor. The aisle between the counters was 
blocked with sewing machines, kitchen tables, 
chairs, lawn mowers, crates of eggs and cases of 
ginger ale and sarsaparilla. There were barrels 
of coarse salt and great tins of lard, firkins of 
mackerel and herring, barrels of flour and sacks 
of meal. One would think that everything in 
the world that could be bought or sold was in that 
little store, but no! A door to one side led into 
another room and this room was also full to over- 
flowing. There were more barrels of provisions 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 29 

for man and beast; sacks of chicken feed and 
bran; stoves of all kinds; poultry netting; coils 
of wire fencing; gardening implements and away 
back in a corner I spied a coffin. 

What a setting for such a jewel as Annie 
Pore! Her beauty shone resplendent from its 
background of apron gingham and butter crocks. 
I fancied I could detect a little redness to her 
eyelids as though the disappointment in not be- 
ing at Maxton with her friends had caused some 
weeping, but her manner was calm and her ex- 
pression one of resignation to fate and the de- 
crees of a selfish father. I could not help think- 
ing how I would have behaved under the circum- 
stances, or the Tucker twins. I would not have 
cried, to be sure, but neither would my expression 
have been resigned. As for Dum and Dee: they 
would no doubt have broken up the shop. 

“We are so sorry Amnie can’t come to the 
house-party,” I ventured as the farmer who had 
been haggling for the rake decided not to take it. 

Why Mr. Pore was ever able to sell anything 
I could not see. His manner was so superior and 


30 


A HOUSE PARTY 


condescending. Harvie told me afterwards that 
Mr. Pore had succeeded in spite of himself. He 
was scrupulously honest in the first place and 
then he always carried the best line of goods. As 
for the science of salesmanship: he had yet to 
learn its rudiments. He looked sore and irri- 
tated at having failed to make the sale but put 
on more than ever the manner of insulted roy- 
alty. I saw the farmer making for the rival store 
where a little later he emerged. Blinker had 
made the sale. 

When I ventured the above remark, Annie 
looked as though she wished I wouldn’t, and her 
father, I am sure, regretted the fact that I was 
part English, and that English of good blood; 
otherwise he could easily -have annihilated me. 

“It is a matter I do not care to discuss,” he 
said with a freezing hauteur. 

“ Oh, I am not discussing with you, my dear 
Mr. Pore ! I am merely telling you. All of us 
are so devoted to Annie and we have looked for- 
ward to being with her on this house-party all 
summer. I am sure if Harvie had known earlier 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 31 

that you would not be able to spare Annie at this 
time, he would have been glad to postpone the 
party.” 

“Ahem — I — am compelled to take this occa- 
sion for a business trip. When one is engaged in 
mercantile pursuits, it is necessary to make peri- 
odical visits to the city to replenish one’s wares.” 

“ Oh, certainly, I understand, but we still are 
dreadfully sorry about Annie. Of course we 
know that you want her to have all the pleasure 
on earth. That is the way fathers are made. 
We are sure you will make your stay as brief as 
possible so that Annie can join us at Maxton.” 

He looked somewhat taken aback and mur- 
mured something more about mercantile pur- 
suits. Sleepy sat on a keg of nails with eyes as 
big as saucers while Annie had the startled ex- 
pression of one who sees her friend enter the cage 
of a man-eating lion. 

“ You see I am an only child, too, Mr. Pore, 
and my mother is dead, just like Annie’s. I 
know better than anyone how much a father can 
be to a little motherless daughter, and how that 


32 


A HOUSE PAETY 


father can plan and deny himself for his child. 
You can’t tell me anything about the love of a 
father.” 

As Mr. Pore had never attempted to tell of 
any such thing, this was most audacious of me. 
Annie was actually gasping and Sleepy choked, 
but Mr. Pore looked at me quite solemnly 
through his gold-rimmed glasses. 

“ Sometimes my father is called away; you see 
a country doctor’s time is not his own, either, and 
he has had to leave me just when I felt I most 
needed him — on birthdays — and — and — all kinds 
of holidays, but he comes back to me just as fast 
as he can. My father is thinking of getting an 
assistant and then he can have more time, I hope. 
You have had an assistant, too, have you not? ” 
He bowed gravely. 

“ Where is he, then? ” 

“ He is away on leave.” 

“111? That is too bad!” 

No, not ill! He is having a much-needed 
holiday.” 


“ Oh, then he has gone on a trip? ” 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 33 

“ I fancy not.” 

“ Why, then I am sure he would be glad to 
come back and relieve Annie so she can come to 
Maxton. Oh, Mr. Pore, do please write for him 
to come on back and take his holiday later! ” 

“Really, Miss Allison ” he began in his 

most dignified Oxford donnish manner. 

“ Oh, I just know you will! You and Father 
and Mr. Tucker are all just alike. You can’t 
bear to deny your girls any pleasure.” 

His expression was comical at having these vir- 
tues thrust upon him. 

“ I — er — I — shall endeavor to return from this 
enforced journey, necessary to replenish the 
stock which one engaged in mercantile pursuits 
in the rural districts finds it expedient to carry, 
and on my return if all goes well with the busi- 
ness, I shall permit my daughter to enjoy the 
hospitality extended to her by my neighbor, Gen- 
eral Price.” 

“ I knew you would! I knew you would!” 
and I shook his limp hand which Dee Tucker had 
once said reminded her of nothing so much as an 


34 


A HOUSE PAETY 


old pump handle that had lost the sucker. 
Everybody knows how that feels, at least every- 
body who has had dealings with pumps. You 
grasp the handle expecting some resistance and a 
flow of water in response; but when the sucker 
has disappeared, the handle will fly up in a 
strange limp manner and unless the pumper is 
wary there is danger of getting a lick in the nose. 

I cared not for a response. If no flow of kindli- 
ness was the result of my enthusiasm, I cared not 
a whit. Annie was to be one of the house-party 
and I had saved the day. I remembered how 
Mr. Tucker, dear old Zebedee, had declared that 
he had won over Mr. Pore by treating him like a 
human being, that time he had persuaded him to 
let Annie come to Willoughby to the vacation 
party. I had treated him as I would any ordi- 
nary kind father and he had been so astonished 
and pleased at his portrait that he had uncon- 
sciously accepted it as a likeness and begvm to 
pose to look like it. 


CHAPTER III 


ENGAGING IN MERCANTILE PURSUITS 

A warning whistle from the up-going steam- 
boat made the dignified Mr. Pore step lively. 
With admonitions to Annie to keep an eye to 
business and with a iimp handshake to Sleepy 
and me, a peck of a kiss on Annie’s white brow, 
he seized his ancient Gladstone bag and made for 
the landing. That bag must have been a left- 
over from the old days in England, and more 
precious it was in its owner’s eyes than the finest 
new suitcase that money might buy. 

All of us were relieved that he was gone. I 
giggled with joy and Annie smiled at Sleepy and 
me as she had not done since we arrived. 

“ All the gang is coming down soon to see you, 

honey. They would have come with us but we 

slipped off,” said I, going behind the counter to 

hug my little friend. I always have had a way 
35 


36 A HOUSE PAETY 

of calling Annie my little friend, which is most 
absurd as she is inches taller than I am, but there 
has been a feeling somehow that she must be pro- 
tected, and persons who must be protected seem 
little even when they are big. 

“ Gee, I wish I could take you on a little drive 
before they come! ” exclaimed Sleepy. 

“ That is very kind of you but of course I can’t 
leave the shop,” sighed Annie. 

“ Yes, you can! I am here! ” 

“ But I wouldn’t let you keep shop for me,” 
laughed Annie. 

“ I’d like to know why not — I bet I can sell 
more things than you can. Just you try me.” 

“ It isn’t that! I just couldn’t let you. It is 
something I have to do but it is not right for you 
to do it.” 

“ Such nonsense! You just put on your hat 
and go with Sleepy. How do you know what is 
the price of things? ” 

“Almost all the goods have marks on them but 
here is a list of prices, besides, — but Page, dear, — 
I just couldn’t let you do it.” 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 


37 


“ Well, you just can! ” and I took off my own 
hat and put it on her head. I hadn’t known be- 
fore what a pretty hat it was. Any hat would be 
glorified by Annie’s wonderful honey-colored 
hair. “ Now give me your apron ! ” and I untied 
the little frilly affair that Annie wore to keep 
shop in and put it on myself. 

Sleepy took her by the aijm and carried her off, 
protesting, laughing, holding back, but happy in 
being coerced. 

“ Take her for a long drive, Sleepy! I can 
run this store and sell it out of supplies in no 
time, I am sure.” 

I heard the sound of the red wheels of the 
spruce little buggy die away as the driver let the 
young horse have free reha. I gave a sigh of joy. 
Here I was keeping store at last! What would 
Mammy Susan say? It is not often that the 
acme of one’s ambition is reached so young. I 
smoothed down my apron and slipped in behind 
the counter just as a customer entered. 

It was a farmer’s wife who had driven over to 
the landing for provisions. She hitched her horse 


38 


A HOUSE PAETY 


and ramshackle buggy in front of the store and 
came in prepared to spend a delightful hour. 
Going to the store in the country is the event of 
the week. Her eye had an eager gleam and there 
was a flush on her high cheek bones. She was a 
gaunt-looking woman with hair slicked up so 
tight under her stiff straw hat that it looked as 
though it must hurt. The hat had all the flowers 
that grow in an old-fashioned garden bedecking 
it, to say nothing of spiky bows of green ribbon 
and a rhinestone buckle. She had on a linen 
duster which had evidently been hastily donned 
over a calico house dress. 

“ Where’s Mr. Pore? ” 

“ He has gone to Richmond.” 

“ Where’s Annie?” 

“ She has stepped out for a moment. Please 
may I serve you? ” 

“ No, I reckon I’ll come again when some of 
them are in. I’ll go over to Blinker’s and trade 
this morning.” 

Heavens! Was I to stand still and see cus- 
tomers go over to the rival store? Had I missed 


WITH THE TUCKEK TWINS 39 

my vocation after all my dreams? Was store- 
keeping not what I was cut out for? 

“ I’m sorry you won’t stay and see these new 
ginghams,” I faltered. A gleam in her eye em- 
boldened me to proceed. “ They are making 
them up so pretty in Richmond now.” 

“ Well, I wonder if they are! Are you from 
Richmond? ” 

“ I have been visiting there but I am from 
Milton. I love to visit in Richmond. Don’t 
you? It is such a good way to get the new 
styles.” 

That had fetched her. She gave up all idea of 
trading with Blinker. What did he know of 
styles and the way ginghams were being made 
up in the city? I got down stacks of dry-goods 
and with my first customer began to plan a won- 
derful garment for the protracted meeting soon 
to take place. Gingham was decided not to be 
fine enough for the occasion and a pretty piece of 
voile was chosen instead. A silk drop skirt must 
go with it and bunches of velvet ribbon must set 
it off. The farmer’s wife was having the time of 


40 


A HOUSE PAETY 


her life and I was enjoying myself to the utmost. 
I measured off the material in a most profes- 
sional manner, trembling for fear the customer 
would find out what a novice I was. I was 
thankful that she was to make it instead of me. 
With all of my learned talk about clothes, I could 
not have sewed up a pillowslip and had it fit the 
pillow. 

Next on the program was chicken feed. The 
rats had devoured her supply of wheat saved for 
the poultry and the corn had not yet been har- 
vested. We had to go in the adjoining room for 
that and I had a chance to peep at my price list 
on the way. I persuaded her also into laying in 
a supply of canned soups and got her interested 
in a lawn mower and a patent churn. She de- 
clared she was coming over the next day with her 
husband and try to persuade him to purchase 
both of them for her. 

“Men- folks are mighty slow to get implements 
for the women. I ain’t complaining of my old 
man, but he thinks he must have every new-fan- 
gled bit of farming machinery that comes along 


WITH THE TUCKER TWIKS 41 

while I am churning with the same old big-at-the- 
bottom-and - little- at-the-top-little-thing-in-the- 
middle-goes-flippityflop churn that my mother 
had. As for the bit of lawn around the house 
that he ’lows me, — that has to be cut with a sickle 
just when I can catch a hand to do it. Now if I 
had that little lawn mower I could run it myself 
and keep things kind of tidy like ’round the 
house.” 

“ Of course you could,” I assented. “ Now 
don’t you want some of this cheese? It is right 
fresh.” I had noted a great new cheese in a glass 
case that had evidently been cut only that morn- 
ing. “ Do you ever make polenta? This cheese 
would be fine for that.” 

“ No, do tell! I never even heard of it.” 

“ Why, it is a great dish among the Italians 
and is the best thing you ever tasted.” 

“ I’m a great hand for cooking and sho’ do 
relish a new recipe.” 

“ Take three cups of boiling water and one cup 
of corn meal and one cup of grated cheese, and a 
teaspoon of salt. Stir the meal into the boiling 


42 


A HOUSE PAETY 


water and let it cook until it begins to get thick 
and then put in the cheese and salt and bake it in 
a well-greased pan. It is dandy eating.” 

“ Well now, doesn’t that sound nice? Give 
me a pound of the cheese and one of those new 
pans to bake it in. My pans are all pretty nigh 
burnt out.” 

“ Did you ever try any of this glassware for 
baking? It is so nice and clean and the crust 
looks so pretty showing through. To be sure it 
is more expensive than tin, but it is so satisfac- 
tory.” 

“ I never heard of such a thing! Show it to 
me.” 

I had noticed with some surprise that Mr. Pore 
had a supply of the fire-proof glass just coming 
into general use. He was certainly a progressive 
buyer for one who was such a poor salesman. I 
sold her. two glass baking dishes and then more 
dry-goods. It took three trips for us to carry 
out all her packages to the buggy. More pur- 
chasers had arrived in the meantime. I foresaw 
a busy time. 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 43 

A little colored girl with three eggs tied up in a 
rag wanted to trade them for flour. 

“ My maw is'makin’ a cake fur the barsket 
fun’ral an’ she ain't got a Gawd’s mouth er flour 
in the house. She say if’n she can trade these 
here fur some flour she’ll be jes’ a-kitin’.” 

“ Whar you git them aigs? ” asked an old uncle 
suspiciously. I had just sold him a plug of 
“ eatin’ terbaccer.” 

“ I git ’em out’n the nesses, whar they b’long,” 
she asserted, tossing her wrapped plaits scorn- 
fully. 

“ Yer ain’t got but one hen an 5 I done see yo’ 
maw a-wringing her naick this ve’y mawnin’.” 

“ What’n if’n yer did? That ole blue hen been 
layin’ two three times er day lately, an’ my maw 
she says she mus’ about laid out by this time, so 
she up’n kilt her fer the barsket fun’ral goin’ on 
at de same time of de big meetin’. But laws 
a mussy ! Do you know she was that full er aigs 
that it war distressful? ” The child’s eyes were 
wistful at the remembrance. 

“ Well, well ! Nobody can’t tell ’bout women 


44 A HOUSE PAETY 

an’ hens. It seems lak nobody don’t speak up 
an’ testify how much good they is in some sisters 
’til they is dead an’ gone. Same way with hens ! 
Same way with hens ! Is yo’ maw gwinter bile it 
or bake it? ” 

“ Sh’ain’t ’cided. If’n yer bile it yer gits soup 
extry an’ if’n yer bake it yer gits stuffin’ an’ 
graby.” 

I was thankful for the little training I had in 
mathematics when it was up to me to convert 
eggs into flour. Some problem! I put in a lit- 
tle extra flour to make sure and the child skipped 
off. 

At this juncture the Tucker twins, Mary Flan- 
nagan, and a troop of young men from Maxton 
blew in. I was secretly relieved that Miss Wil- 
cox was not of the party. Not that I minded 
her seeing me keep store, but I had a feeling she 
might be a little scornful of Annie Pore. 

“ Where is Annie? ” cried Dum. 

“We are nearly dead to see her,” declared 
Dee. 

“ Gone driving with Sleepy. I am keeping 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 45 

store in her absence. His Lord High Muck-a- 
Muck has embarked for Richmond.” 

“ What fun! What fun! We bid to help ! ” 

“ Maybe only one had better help, as pur- 
chasers coming in might be overcome by too 
many clerks,” I laughed. 

“ You are right ! Dee must be the one because 
she is so tactful,” said Dum magnanimously. 

So Dee took off her hat and got behind the 
candy and ginger ale side of the counter, and 
then such a buying and selling ensued as that 
country store had never witnessed. 

Of course everybody treated everybody else 
and then had to be treated in turn. I stayed on 
the dry-goods side, and while I was not doing 
such a thriving business as Dee, still I had my 
hands full. The farmer’s wife had met some ac- 
quaintances and sent them to Pore’s to see the 
new clerk who could tell them so much about 
Richmond styles. I had to draw a gallon of 
kerosene for one customer, but Wink insisted 
upon doing this for me. I did not want him 
to one little bit. If I was to be storekeeper* 


46 


A HOUSE PAETY 


I preferred being one, not just playing at 
it. 

“ I think you are wonderful, Page, to do this 
for Annie,” he whispered to me as we made our 
way to the coal oil barrel. 

“ Nonsense! What is wonderful about it? ” 

“ You are always kind to everybody but me.” 

“ Do you want me to keep store for you? ” 

“ No, I want you to keep house for me,” he 
muttered. 

“ But I did not know you had a house,” I 
teased. 

He pumped vigorously at the coal oil. 

“ I intend to have one some day.” 

“ A grand one, surely, if you expect to have a 
housekeeper! ” 

“ Page, you know what I mean! ” He looked 
longingly into my eyes that I knew were full of 
mischievous twinkles. 

“All I know is, you have wasted about a quart 
of kerosene.” 

The floor was flooded. It is a difficult thing to 
pump coal oil and make love at the same time. 


WITH THE TUCKEE TWINS 47 

Poor Wink had done both of his jobs badly. He 
looked aghast at the havoc he had caused. 

“ I am a bungling fool! ” he cried. 

“ No, Wink, you are not that. You are just 
not an adept at — pumping coal oil.” 

“ Why are you always different with me? 
You don’t treat other fellows the way you do 
me.” 

“ You don’t treat other girls the way you do 
me,” I retorted. 

“ Of course not ! I don’t feel towards them as 
I do towards you.” 

“ Well, it is a good thing your feelings don’t 
make *you grouchy with everybody. You just 
exude gloom as soon as you get with me. But 
this isn’t keeping shop for Annie,” and I grabbed 
the oil can from him and ran back into the store. 

I was very glad to see Wink make his way to 
Dee. He usually went to her after a bout with 
me. They were great friends and seemed to 
have a million things of interest to discuss and 
nothing to disagree about. I could have been 
just as good a friend to him if he had only 


48 


A HOUSE PARTY 


dropped the eternal subject and treated me as he 
did Dee: like an ordinary girl who was ready for 
a good time but had no idea of a serious attach- 
ment. We were nothing but chits of girls, after 
all, and only out of school because Gresham hap- 
pened to burn down before we had time to gradu- 
ate 

“ Umm! How you do smell of coal oil!” 
cried Dee. “ Don’t dare to touch anything in 
my line of groceries until you have washed your 
hands. There’s a basin back there.” 

Wink laughed and washed his hands as com- 
manded. Now if I had said to him what Dee 
had he would have been furious, and gloom im- 
penetrable would have ensued. 

That afternoon I cut off and planned four dif- 
ferent dresses for four farmers’ wives, selling 
trimming and ribbons and fancy buttons. I 
made many trades with persons bringing in eggs 
and chickens and carrying off various commodi- 
ties in exchange. I was never so busy in my life. 
Dee was equally so, even after we had persuaded 
the noisy crowd from Maxton to depart. 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 49 

“ Goodness! I feel as though I had been serv- 
ing at a church fair,” cried Dee, sinking down 
exhausted on a soap box. 

She had just wheedled a shy young farmer into 
thinking that existence could not continue with- 
out a box of scented soap and a new cravat, al- 
though he had made a trip to the store for noth- 
ing more ornate than salt for the cattle. 

“ How do you reckon Annie ever gets through 
the day if this one is a sample? I haven’t 
stopped a minute and here come some more 
traders.” 

The fact was that Dee and I had done about 
three times as much selling as the Pores usually 
accomplished. Word had gone forth that we 
were keeping shop, and everybody hastened to 
the country store. Dee found this out by acci- 
dent over the telephone. There was such a vio- 
lent ringing of the bell that she hastened to an- 
swer it, not being on to the country ’phone where 
everybody’s bell rings at every call. This is what 
she overheard: 

“ Say, Milly ! Pore’s have got some gals from 


50 


A HOUSE PAETY 


Richmond clerking there. They can put you on 
to the styles.” 

“ So I hear! I’m gettin’ the mule hitched up 
fast as I can to go over.” 

And then a masculine voice took it up evi- 
dently from another section: 

“ They say they are peaches, too! ” 

“ That you, Dick Lee? Where’ d you hear 
about them? ” 

“ Saw Lem Baker on the way, goin’ for salt. 
He got it from Jim Cullen.” 

“I bet you’ll be there soon yourself,” broke in 
the voice of Milly. 

“ Sure! My car is already cranked up gettin’ 
up speed for the run. S’long! ” 

“ Wait! What you goin’ to buy, Dick? Your 
sister told me you went to the store yesterday and 
laid in enough for a week.” 

“ Well, I may get a coffin,” laughed the gay 
voice of Dick as he hung up the receiver. 


CHAPTER IV 


% 

DEE TUCKER MAKES A SALE 

“ Page! I’ve been eavesdropping! I declare 
I never meant to do it. I got into the swim of 
the conversation and somehow couldn’t get out of 
it,” cried Dee, blushing furiously. “ I don’t 
know what Zebedee would say if he knew it.” 

“ Why, honey, that isn’t eavesdropping!” I 
laughed. “ Country people always listen to 
everything they can over the ’phone. That is the 
only way we have of spreading the news. I can 
assure you that perfectly good church members 
in our county make a practice of running to the 
telephone every - time a neighbor’s bell rings. 
How many were on the line when you cut in? ” 

“ Three or four, I should say, I couldn’t quite 
tell.” 

Then Dee told me the conversation she had 
overheard, making me a party to the crime of 
eavesdropping. 


51 


52 


A HOUSE PAETY 


“ Here comes Dick now, I do believe. He 
was the one who was all cranked up ready to 
come.” 

There was a great buzzing and hissing on the 
road as a disreputable looking Ford came speed- 
ing down the hill. I have never seen such a di- 
lapidated car, and still it ran and made good 
time, too. There was not a square inch of paint 
left on its faithful sides, and the top was hanging 
down on one side, giving it the appearance of a 
broken-winged crow. The doors flapped in the 
breezes, and the mud-guards were bent and 
twisted as though they had had many a collision. 

Dick, however, was spruce enough to make up 
for the appearance of his car. He had on a 
bright blue suit, the very brightest blue one can 
imagine coming in any material but glass or 
china; a necktie made of a silk U. S. flag, with a 
scarf pin which looked very like an owl with two 
great imitation ruby eyes ; but I found on inspec- 
tion it was the American Eagle. His shoes were 
very gay yellow and his socks striped red and 
white, carrying out the color scheme of his cravaf. 


WITH THE TUCKER TWIKS 53 

I ducked behind my side of the counter leaving 
the field clear for Dee. She stood to her guns 
and gave the newcomer a radiant smile. She was 
there to sell goods for Annie Pore and sell them 
she would. 

“ Evenin’ ! ” 

“ How do you do? What can I do for you? ” 

“ Pretty day! ” 

“Yes, fine! Is there something I can show, 
you? ” 

“ Not so warm as yesterday and a little bit 
cooler than the day before ! ” 

“ Yes, that is so. We’ve got in a fresh 
cheese, — maybe you would like a few pounds of 
it.” 

“ Looks like rain but the moon hangs dry.” 

“ Oh, I hope it won’t rain, — but maybe it will 
— let me sell you an umbrella, — they are great 
when it rains.” 

“ We don’t to say need rain for most of the 
crops, but it wouldn’t hurt the late potatoes.” 

“ Oh, I’m glad of that ! ” 

“ But the watermelons don’t need a drop more. 


54 


A HOUSE PARTY 


They are ripening' fine, — rain would make them 
too mushy like. I’m going to ship a load of them 
next week. I ’low I’ll get about three hundred 
off of that sandy creek bottom.” 

“ Fine! Watermelons are my favorite berry.” 

Right there I exploded and the young man let 
out a great haw! haw! too that helped to break 
the ice, and also enabled Dee to stop her painful 
rejoinders to his polite small talk, and then he 
began to buy. I heard Annie and Sleepy as 
they hitched the horse at the post and I hoped de- 
voutly the festive Dick would buy out the store 
before they got in. 

Already he had purchased six cravats, a new 
coal shuttle, a much-decorated set of bedroom 
china, a bag of horse cakes, some canned salmon 
and a box of axle grease when Annie made her 
appearance. 

She was looking so lovely that I did not blame 
Sleepy for having the expression of a hungry 
man. She was certainly good enough to eat. 

“ Oh, Page, we had such a wonderful drive! I 
am so afraid we were gone too long, but George 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 55 

simply would not turn around.” Annie was the 
only person who always called Sleepy by his 
Christian name. 

“ He was quite right. I have had the time of 
my life. Dee is helping me. She is in the other 
room now, selling a young man named Dick 
everything in the store. Don’t butt in on her; 
let her finish her sales. Here come the others! 
They said they would be back to see you.” 

In came all the house-party and such a hug- 
ging and kissing and handshaking ensued as I 
am sure that little country store had never before 
witnessed. 

“ Oh, Annie, we miss you so! ” cried Mary. 

“ Indeed we do! ” from the others. 

“ Maybe I can be with you in a day or so,” said 
Annie. “ Father is going to try to return in a 
very little while.” 

“ Well, until he does come back one of us is 
going to be with you every day,” declared Dum. 
“ Page and Dee need not think they are the only 
ones who are going to help.” 

Annie’s eyes were full of happy tears. “ What 


56 


A HOUSE PAETY 


have I done to deserve so many dear friends ?” 
she whispered to me. 

“ Nothing but just be your sweet self! ” I an- 
swered. “ I must peep in and see what Dee is 
doing to that poor defenseless Dick. I bet she 
has sold him a kitchen stove by this time.” 

Annie and I made our way into the outer room, 
where at the far end we could see Dick and Dee 
in earnest converse. 

“ It is a very excellent one,” she was declaim- 
ing. “ In fact, I am sure there is not abetter one 
to be bought. It is air tight and water tight; of 
the best material; the latest style; the workman- 
ship on it is very superior; the price is ridicu- 
lously low. Really I think all country people 
ought to have one in the house for emergencies. 
One never can tell when one will be needed and 
sometimes they are so difficult to get in a hurry.” 

“That’s so!” agreed the enamored Dick. 
4 4 But I reckon I could get this any time from old 
man Pore if I should need it.” 

“ Oh, no ! You see this is the only one in stock 
and somebody might come for this this very 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 57 

night, and then where would you be if you 
needed it? Then even if you could get another 
one, it might not be nearly so attractive as this 
one. They are going up, too, all the time, — ef- 
fect of the war. Of course this .was bought when 
they were not so high, and I am letting you have 
advantage of the price we paid for it. After this 
they will be up at least forty per cent. — that’s the 
truth. The war prices are something fierce.” 

“ Ain’t it the truth? ” 

“ Yes, and then you might not be able to get 
another lavender one. I just know lavender 
would be becoming to you. I’d like to see you in 
a lavender one.” 

“ Would you really now? That settles it then! 
I’ll have to get old Pore to trust me, though, until 
I sell my melons.” 

“ Oh, that’s all right. Just whenever you feel 
like paying.” 

I was completely mystified. What on earth 
was that ridiculous girl selling to the young 
farmer? Annie was reduced to the limpness of 
a wet dishrag by what we had overheard. The 


58 


A HOUSE PAETY 


giggles had her in their clutches and she could not 
speak. 

“ Do you think you can help me out with it? ” 
asked the young man. 

“ Sure! It is not heavy yet.” 

Around the labyrinth made by the farming 
implements, stoves, etc., came the buyer and 
seller, he backing and she carefully guiding him. 
Between them they carried a long something; I, 
at first, could not make out what. 

“A coffin!” I gasped. 

Through the door they made their way into the 
store proper. Some colored customers had just 
come in and these fell back with expressions of 
curiosity and awe equally mingled on their black 
faces. 

“ Who daid? Who daid?” they whispered, 
but no one vouchsafed any information. Dee 
looked supernaturally solemn and Dick only 
wanted to get his latest purchase safely landed in 
his car. 

The house-party had adjourned to the porch 
in front, and when the lugubrious procession 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 59 

emerged from the store the gaiety suddenly 
ceased. As Dick backed out, the young men 
doffed their caps and the girls bowed their heads. 
What was their amazement when Dee turned out 
to have hold of the other end. Every man sprang 
forward to take her place, but she sadly shook her 
head and held on to her job. 

“ It isn’t heavy,” she whispered. 

Dum’s eyes filled with tears. She thought 
with sadness that in a short while it would be 
heavy when it fulfilled its destiny. She was very 
proud of her twin that she should be so kind 
and helpful at such a time. How like Dee 
it was to be assisting this poor young man, who 
had perhaps lost some one near and dear to 
him ! 

No one spoke, but all remained reverently un- 
covered while the coffin was hoisted on the back 
seat of the ragged old car. The young men as- 
sisted in this, although Dee would not resign her 
place as chief mourner. 

“ Who daid? Who daid? ” clamored the dar- 
kies who seemed to spring up from the ground, 


60 


A HOUSE PAETY 


such a crowd of them appeared in the twinkling 
of an eye. 

“ I don’t know,” said Dum in a teary voice, 
“ but isn’t it sad? ” 

“ ’Tain’t Miss Rena Lee ’cause I jes’ done 
seed her headin’ fer the sto’,” declared a little 
pickaninny. 

“ She ain’t a-trus’in’ her bones ter* Mr. Dick’s 
artermobe. She done sayed she gonter dribe her 
ole yaller mule whar she gwinter go.” 

“Ain’t de Lees got a boardner? Maybe it’s de 
boardner,” suggested a helpful old woman. 

“ Well, I wonder if it is ! Here he come ! I’m 
a-gwinter arsk him.” 

Dick came out laden with his other purchases. 

“ Lawsamussy ! It mus’ be de boardner an’ all 
er her folks is a-comin’ down, ’cause how come 
Mr. Dick hafter buy all them things otherwise? 
Look thar chiny an’ coal skuttles an’ what not! ” 

“ Who daid, Mr. Dick? Who daid? ” 

“ Nobody I know of! ” grinned the young man. 

“ Ain’t it de boardner? ” 

“ What boarder? ” 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 61 

“ Miss Rena’s boardner! ” 

“ Sister Rena hasn’t any boarder that I know 
of. Here, get out of the road or I’ll let you 
know who is dead! ” 

He took a fond farewell of Dee and cranking 
up his noisy car, he jumped to his seat and 
speeded home with the coffin and the coal shuttle 
bouncing up and down right merrily. 

“ Ain’t nobody daid? ” grieved a sad old 
woman. 

“No! Nobody ain’t daid!” snapped an old 
man. “ Nobody ain’t eben a-dyin’. Now that 
thar Dick Lee done bought up th’ only carsket 
in the sto’ an’ my Luly is mighty low — mighty 
low.” 

“ Sho-o’ nuf I ain’t heard tell of it. Is she in 
de baid?” 

“ Well, not ter say in de baid — but on de baid, 
on de baid. Anyhow ’tain’t safe to count on her 
fer long. White folks is sho’ graspin’ these days. 
They is sho’ graspin’.” 

The old man departed on his way grumbling. 

“ Caroline Tucker, what did you sell that cof- 


62 


A HOUSE PAETY 


fin to that young man for? ” demanded Dum 
sternly. 

“ Just to see if I could, Virginia Tucker. I 
told him I’d like to see him in a coffin lined with 
lavender, and he was so complimented, he imme- 
diately bought it to keep for a rainy day.” 

Dee and I had made so many sales that Annie 
had to send a telegram informing her father of 
the diminished stock. It was necessary to order 
another coffin immediately in case the ailing Luly 
might need it. 


CHAPTER V 


THE HUMAN FLY 

General Price was vastly amused over the 
account of Dee’s sale of the coffin to the amiable 
Dick. Miss Maria was frankly shocked, and 
Miss Wilcox amazed and a little scornful. 

“ I never cared for slumming,” she announced 
that night when we had retired to the girls’ wing. 

“ But helping Annie Pore keep store is not 
slumming,” said Dee, the dimple in her chin 
deepening. 

Dee Tucker had a dimple in her chin just like 
her father. When father and daughter got ready 
for a fight, those dimples always deepened. 

“ Most kind of you, I am sure, although that 
sort of adventure never appealed to me. I have 
taught in the mission school in New York’s East 
Side, but when the class is over I always leave. I 
can’t bear to mix with the lower classes. It is all 

right to help them but not by mixing.” 

63 


64 A HOUSE PAETY 

“ But you don’t understand, — Annie Pore is 
one of our very best friends. She is not the 
lower classes. She is better born than any of us 
and prettier and better bred and more accom- 
plished ” 

“ Ah, indeed! I should like to behold this 
paragon.” * 

“ Well, you shall behold her all right! She is 
going to join us here in a day or so.” 

Jessie Wilcox looked very much astonished 
and quite haughty. She could not understand 
the Prices asking such a person to meet her. The 
daughter of a country storekeeper was hardly 
one whom she cared to know socially. Dee had 
gone about it the wrong way to make the spoiled 
beauty look with favor on the little English girl: 
— prettier, better born, better bred, indeed ! As 
for accomplishments: what accomplishments 
could a dowdy little country girl have that she 
had not? 

The Tuckers and Jessie Wilcox were not hit- 
ting it off very well in the great bedroom which 
they shared. Dum had declared she would not 


WITH THE TUCKER TWIKS 65 

move the fluffy finery which was spread out on 
her bed and she stuck to her word. 

“ What are you going to do with these duds? ” 
she asked rather brusquely. 

“ Oh, you just put them back in my trunk,” 
drawled the spoiled roommate. 

“Humph! You had better ring for your 
maid. I’m not much on doing valet work.” 

With that she caught hold of the four corners - 
of the bedspread and with a yank deposited the 
whole thing adroitly on the floor, butter side up. 

Dee told me afterwards that Jessie’s expres- 
sion was one of complete astonishment. She was 
not used to being treated like the common herd. 
Much Dum cared ! She got into the great four- 
posted bed with perfect unconcern, while Dee 
tactfully helped the pouting Jessie to hang up 
her many frocks. 

“ She had better be glad I didn’t go to bed on 
them,” stormed the unrepentant Dum when she 
told me about it. “As for Dee: I was disgusted 
with her for being so mealy-mouthed. Catch me 
hanging up anybody’s clothes! I bet you one 


66 


A HOUSE PAETY 


thing, — I bet you she keeps her fripperies off my 
bed after this.” 

I was in a way sorry for Jessie. I know it 
must be hard to be a spoiled darling turned loose 
with the Tucker twins. They were always per- 
fectly square and fair in all their dealings, but 
they demanded squareness and fairness in others. 
Jessie was evidently accustomed to being waited 
.on and admired, and the Tuckers refused to do 
either of these things necessary for the happiness 
of their roommate. She had always chosen her 
friends with a view to setting off her own charms, 
girls who were homely, less vivacious, duller. It 
did not suit her at all to be outshone in any way. 
She was certainly the prettiest girl in the house- 
party, that is, before Annie arrived, but she was 
not the most attractive. There never were more 
delightful girls in all the world than the Tucker 
twins, witty, charming, vivacious, and very hand- 
some. I could see their development in the two 
years I had known them and realized that they 
were growing to be very lovely women. 

Mary Flannagan was nobody’s pretty girl but 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 67 

she had something better than beauty, at least 
something that proves a better asset in life: ex- 
treme good nature and a sense of humor that em- 
braced the whole universe. She had humor 
enough to see a joke on herself and take it. 
That, to me, is the quintessence of humor. 
Wherever Mary was there also were laughter 
and gaiety. She had a heart as big as all Ire- 
land, from which country she had inherited her 
wit as well as her name. 

Mary was not quite so bunchy as she had been. 
Two years had stretched her out a bit, but she 
would always be something of a rolypoly. She 
was as active as a cat, and so determined was she 
to end up as a character movie actress she never 
stopped her limbering-up exercises. After I 
would get in bed at night she would begin. She 
would turn somersaults, stand on her head, walk 
on her hands, do cart-wheels, bend the crab, fall 
on the floor at full length and do a hundred other 
wonderful stunts. 

“ I am so plain I’ll have to go in for slap-stick 
comedy and maybe work up to the legit., but go 


68 A HOUSE PABTY 

in I will. Why, Page, there is oodlums_of money 

in movies and think of the life ! 

“ I can see you, Mary, as a side partner to 
Douglas Fairbanks. Can you climb up a wall 
like a fly? ” I laughed. 

“ No-o, not yet but soon! I can’t get much 
practice in wall scaling. I am dying to try this 
wall outside our window. It is covered with ivy 
and would be easy as dirt, I know,” and she 
poked her head out the window, gazing longingly 
at the tempting perpendicularity of the wall be- 
neath. 

Mr. Thomas Hawkins, alias Shorty, thought 
Mary was just about the best chum a fellow could 
have, and great was his joy when Fate landed 
him at the same country house with the inimitable 
Mary. Shorty, too, had made out to grow a bit 
since first we saw him make the great play in the 
football game at Hill Top. He was a very en- 
gaging lad with his tousled mane, rosy cheeks and 
clear boy’s eyes. 

“ Is Shorty going to get into the movies, too? ” 
I teased. 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 69 

“ No, — navy! ” 

“• Oh, how splendid ! I didn’t know he had de- 
cided.” 

\ 

“ Yes! He has talked to me a lot about it,” 
said Mary quite soberly. 

“ What do you think about it? ” 

“ Me? Why, I think our navy is going to 
have to be enlarged and I can’t think of anybody 
better suited to it than Shorty. He is a descend- 
ant of Sir John Hawkins, you know, and that 
means seafaring blood in his veins.” 

How little did Mary and I think, as we lay in 
that great four-post bed and wisely discussed 
preparedness, that our country would really be 
at war in not so very many months, and that 
Shorty’s entering the navy would be a very seri- 
ous matter to all of his friends, if not to him. 

No thoughts of war were disturbing us. The 
great war was going on, but then we were used to 
that and we were too young and thoughtless for 
it to bother us. It was across the water and no 
one we knew personally was implicated. Max- 
ton was too peaceful a spot for one to realize that 


70 


A HOUSE PAKTY 


such a thing as bloodshed could go on anywhere 
in all the world. Our great room with its two 
huge beds and massive wardrobe, bureau and 
washstand, had once sheltered Washington and 
later on Lafayette; and then as the ages had 
rolled by, General Lee had visited the Prices and 
had slept in the very bed where Mary and I were 
lying so sagely and smugly arguing for prepar- 
edness. Perhaps the mocking-bird that every 
now and then gave forth a silvery trill in the holly 
tree near our window was descended from the 
same mocking-bird that no doubt had sung to the 
great warrior as he lay in the four-poster. 

How quiet it was! A whippoorwill gave an 
occasional cry away off in the woods, and once I 
heard the chugging of a small steamboat puffing 
its way up the river, and then a little later the 
swish swash on the shore of the waves made by 
the stern wheel. But for that, the night was ab- 
solutely still. 

“ Page,” whispered Mary, “ are you asleep? ” 

“ Fortunately not, or I’d be awake,” I laughed. 

“ I’m thinking about getting up and trying to 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 71 

scale that wall. I am ’most sure I could do it 
with all that ivy to dig my toes in.” 

“ Why don’t you wait until morning? ” 

“ Because I don’t want an audience. It is best 
to practice these stunts without anyone looking.” 

“ Suppose you fall! ” 

“ That’s something movie actresses have to ex- 
pect. I won’t fall far if I do fall.” 

“ Will you mind if I look on? ” 

“ No, indeed! I can pretend you are the di- 
rector.” 

Everything was as quiet as the grave when 
Mary bounced out of bed to practice her stunt. 
I followed, nothing loath to seejnore of the won- 
derful night. Some nights are too beautiful to 
waste in sleeping. It has always seemed such a 
pity to me that we could not fill up on sleep in 
disagreeable weather, and then when a glorious 
moonlight night arrives, be able to draw on 
that reserve fund of sleep and just sit up all 
night. 

“ Isn’t it splendid out on the lawn? And only 
look at the river in the moonlight. I’d certainly 


72 A HOUSE PARTY 

like to be out there in a boat this minute with 
some very nice interesting person to recite poetry 
to me,” I mused. 

“ I heard Wink White begging you to take a 
row with him.” 

“ Yes, but I see myself doing it.” 

“ Don’t you like him? ” asked Mary, sitting in 
the window ready for the trial descent. 

“ Of course I like him, but he’s such a goose.” 

“ Shorty thinks he is grand.” 

“ So he is — grand, gloomy, and peculiar. If 
he’d only not be so sad and lonesome when he is 
with me.” 

“ Of course all of us have noticed how different 
he is with you, never laughing and joking as he 
does with us but sighing like a furnace. But 
here goes! This is no time for analyzing the 
character of young Doctor Stephen White, — this 
is a play of action.” 

“ But, Mary, ought you try to climb down in 
your nighty? It might get tangled around your 
feet.” 

“ Oh, but the movie ladies always have to get 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 73 

out of windows in their nighties. I must prac- 
tice in costume to get used to it.” 

“ Barefooted, too? ” 

“ Of course! I need all these toes to hang on 
by. Next time I am going to have my ch-e-i-ild, 
but this first time perhaps I had better not try to 
carry anything.” 

“ I should think not, — but, Mary, do be care- 
ful.” 

I was looking down the perpendicular wall and 
it began to seem to me to be a crazy undertaking. 
The vines were very thick and would no doubt 
offer a foot-rest to the daring girl, but suppose 
she lost her head or the vine pulled loose from the 
wall ! 

It is a much easier matter to climb up and get 
in a window than it is to get out of one and climb 
down. There is something very scary about pro- 
jecting one’s bare foot into the unknown. Mary, 
however, was too serious in her desire to perfect 
herself for her chosen profession to stop and wig- 
gle her toes with indecision. She was out of the 
window in a moment. I held my breath. 


74 


A HOUSE PAETY 


“ Oh, God save her! Oh, God save her!” I 
whispered. 

“ Fireman, save my ch-e-i-ild! ” came back in 
sibilant tones from Mary. 

I couldn’t help laughing although I was trem- 
bling with fright. I almost beat Mary to the 
ground I leaned so far out of the window. Some- 
times the thick ivy hid her from my sight and 
again she would loom out very white in the moon- 
light. 

Down at last! I felt like shouting for joy. 
Now began the ascent which was a small matter 
compared to the descent. 

When the climber was about half-way up, I 
suddenly became aware of figures on the edge 
of the lawn. “ The servants returning from 
church,” I thought. Harvie had told me that 
“ big meetin’ ” was going on and his aunt was 
quite concerned about her servants, as they had a 
way of taking French leave at “ big meetin’ ” 
time. With the house-party in session, a 
paucity of servants would be quite serious. 
Extra inducements had been offered and the 



I ALMOST BEAT MARY TO THE GROUND X 
LEANED SO FAR OUT OF THE WINDOW. 
Page 74. 



WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 


75 


whole corps had promised to remain, taking 
turn about in getting off early for night 
church. 

Anyone who has lived in the country, where 
colored servants are the only ones, knows what a 
serious time “ big meetin’ ” can be. The whole 
negro population seems to go mad in a frenzy of 
religious fervor. Crops that are inconsiderate 
enough to ripen at that period remain ungath- 
ered; the washwoman lets soiled clothes pile up 
indefinitely; cooks refuse to cook; housemaids 
have a soul above sweeping; cows go dry for lack 
of milking; horses go uncurried and vehicles un- 
washed and ungreased. 

I smiled when I saw that straggling group re- 
turning from church, knowing they would not be 
fit for any very arduous tasks the next day. I 
remembered how Mammy Susan used to berate 
our darkies for their delinquencies on days 
following meetings. As the churchgoers ap- 
proached the house, which they had to pass to 
reach the quarters on the other side of the great 
house, they suddenly became aware of Mary’s 


76 


A HOUSE PAETY 


white figure hanging midway between heaven 
and earth. 

Shouts and groans arose! One woman fell to 
the ground and, regardless of her finery, rolled 
on the grass imploring her Maker to save her. I 
trembled for fear Mary would fall, but she 
clung to the vine and scrambled up and in the 
window. The darkies ran like frightened rab- 
bits. 

“ They thought you were a ghost, I believe. ,, 

“ Well, I came mighty near giving up the 
ghost. When I heard those groans I thought 
something had me sure/’ panted the great actress, 
looking ruefully at a long rent in her very best 
nighty. “ I did it all right, but being a great 
movie actress who is to play opposite Douglas 
Fairbanks is certainly hard on one’s rags. Look, 
here’s another tear! Another and another! I 
did that when the first darky squealed.” 

Of course we went to bed giggling. 

“ I wish Tweedles had seen you, but' they 
would not have been willing to be mere audience. 
As for me, — I have no desire to be classified as 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 77 

a human fly. I wonder if we will hear some wild 
tale from those silly darkies.” 

But Mary was fast asleep before she could ex- 
press her opinion. I could not sleep until I got 
the following limerick out of my system: 

The Human Fly 
Our Mary, an actress so flighty, 

Scaled a wall in her very best nighty. 

A nail proved a snag 
And tore her fine rag, 

She came back a la Aphrodite. 


CHAPTER VI 


“ BIG MEETIN" " 

I awakened early the next morning in spite 
of having been manager of a movie studio at all 
hours of the night. Mary was sleeping heavily. 
After all, I fancy climbing up and down a brick 
wall is harder than merely watching someone else 
do it. She had a big scratch across her cheek and 
her thumb had bled on the pillow. She must 
have snagged it on the same nail she had her best 
nighty. I peeped out of my eastern window and 
found Dum Tucker was doing the same thing 
from hers. 

“ Hello, honey! I’m so glad you’re awake,” 
she whispered. “ Let’s dress and go out.” 

“ Is Dee asleep? ” 

“ Sound! And the Lady Jessie is likewise 
snoozing, not looking nearly so pretty with her 
hair up in curl papers and her face greased with 

cold cream. I bet I can beat you dressing! ” 

78 


WITH THE TUCKEE TWINS 7£ 

We sprang from our doors into the hall at the 
same time and feeling sure we were the only ones 
awake in all the great mansion, we had the never- 
to-be-scorned joy of sliding down the bannisters. 
I’d hate to think I could ever get so old I 
wouldn’t like to slide down bannisters. Of 
Course I know I shall some day get too old to do 
if, but not too old to want to. 

We ran out the great back door which opened 
SB the formal garden. 

“ My, I’m glad we waked! I was nearly dead 
lo sit up all night,” said Dum. 

“ Me, too! Mary and I were awake very late. 
Did you hear anything? ” 

“ Did I!” 

:c What did you hear? ” 

“ A strange scratching along the wall, — I 
thought it was a whole lot of snakes climbing up 
to our window. There is only one thing in the 
world I am afraid of, and that is snakes.” 

“ Mammy Susan says that f endurin’ of the war, 
they is sho’ to be mo’ snakes than in peaceable 
times.’ Of course she has no idea that this war is 


80 


A HOUSE PAETY 


away off across the water, and if it were inclined 
to breed snakes, it wouldn’t breed them over here. 
But that snake you heard last night was Mary 
Flannagan scaling the wall. She is practicing 
all the time for the movies.” 

“ Pig, not to call us ! ” 

“ I was dying to, but was afraid of raising too 
much rumpus.” 

The garden was beautiful at all times, but at 
that early hour it was so lovely it made us gasp. 
A row of stately hollyhocks separated the flower 
garden from the vegetables. Banked against the 
hollyhocks were all kinds of old-fashioned garden 
flowers: bachelor’s buttons, wall-flowers, pretty- 
bv-nights, love-in-a-mist, heliotrope, verbena, 
etc. There was a thick border of periwinkle 
whose glossy dark green leaves enhanced the 
brilliancy of the plants beyond. One great 
strip was given up entirely to roses, — and such 
roses ! 

“ Gee! This is the life! ” cried Dum, kneeling 
down among the roses, going kind of mad as 
usual over the riot of color. Dum’s love of color 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 81 

and form amounted to a passion. “ Only look at 
the shape of this bud and at the color way down 
in its heart. Oh, Page, I am so glad we came 
out! Only think, this rosebud might have opened 
and withered with not a soul seeing it if we had 
not happened along: 

11 ‘Full many a gem of purest ray serene 
The dark, unfathomed caves of ocean bear — 

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen 
And waste its sweetness on the desert air. ’ J ’ 

“ I wonder where the servants are? ” I queried. 
“At this hour in the country they are usually be- 
ginning to get busy. I tell you, Mammy Susan 
has ’em hustling by this time at Bracken.” 

“ I’m hungry as a bear! Don’t you think we 
might get the old cook to hand us out a crust? ” 
suggested Dum. “ Getting up early always 
makes me famished.” 

“ Sure! She is a nice-looking old party and 
no doubt would be as pleasant as she looks. Her 
name is Aunt Milly.” 

We made our way to the kitchen, determined 
to return to the garden to enjoy the crust or 


82 


A HOUSE PARTY 


whatever the cook might see fit to give us. A 
covered way connected the summer kitchen with 
the wing of the house where the dining-room was. 
This open passage was covered with a lovely old 
vine, one not seen in this day and generation ex- 
cept in old places: Washington’s bower. It is a 
very thick vine that sends forth great shoots that 
fall in a shower like a weeping willow. It has a 
dainty little purple blossom that the bees adore, 
and these turn later into squshy, bright red 
berries. The trunk of this vine is very thick and 
sturdy and twists itself into as many fantastic 
shapes as a wisteria. 

The kitchen was built of logs; in fact it was the 
original homestead of the family, having been 
erected by the earliest settlers at Price’s Land- 
ing. Later on it had been turned into a kitchen 
when the mansion had been built. The great old 
fireplace with its crane and Dutch oven was still 
there, although the cooking was now done on a 
modern range. This black abomination of art, 
but necessity of the up-to-date housekeeper, was 
smoking dismally as we came in. 


WITH THE TUOKEE TWINS 83 

“Aunt Milly, please give me a biscuit! ” cried 
Dum to a fat back bending over the table. 

The owner of the back straightened up and 
turned. It was not Aunt Milly, but Miss Maria 
Price ! 

“ Oh! ” was all we could say. 

The sedate black-silked and real-laced lady of 
the day before presented a sad spectacle when we 
made that early morning raid on the Maxton 
larder. In place of the handsome black silk she 
wore a baggy lawn kimono, and the fine lace cap 
had given place to a great mob cap that set off 
her moon-like face like a sunflower. Her coun- 
tenance was so woebegone that it distressed us 
and two great tears were squeezing their way 
from her sad eyes. 

“Why, Miss Price! Please excuse us,” I 
said, seeing that Dum was speechless. 

“ Oh, my dear, it is all right now that you have 
seen me out here in this wrapper. These good- 
for-nothing darkies have one and all sent me 
word they are sick this morning and cannot come 
to work, and here I am with no breakfast cooked. 


84 A HOUSE PAETY 

I am so distressed that Harvie’s friends should 
not be well served. What shall I do? t What 
shall I do? ” 

“Do! Why, let all of us help,” exclaimed 
Dum. 

“ Let his guests help ! Why, my dear, I could 
not bear to do such a thing.” 

“ Well, you could bear to let us help a great 
deal better than we could bear having you work 
yourself to death and let us be idle,” said I, put- 
ting my arm around her fat neck, that was just 
about the right height to put one’s arm around. 
Her waist was out of the question, being not only 
so low down that I should have had to stoop to 
reach it but invisible at that, since it was, as I 
have said before, only an imaginary line. 

“ I have never before in all the fifty years I 
have been keeping house at Maxton had to make 
a fire. I have done the housekeeping since Ma 
died. My sister-in-law, Harvie’s grandmother, 
was too delicate to keep house, so I have always 
done it. I know exactly how things should be 
done but I have never had to do them. There 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 85 

has always been a cook in the kitchen at Max- 
ton. — This is the first time. — And to think it 
should come to pass when Harvie’s friends are 
here. I was opposed to having the house-party 
during big meeting. There is never any depend- 
ing on the darkies at that time. — Oh me! Oh 
me! ” 

“ Now, Miss Price,” I said, placing a chair be- 
hind her and gently pushing her heaving bulk 
into it, “ you are to sit right here and tell Dum 
Tucker and me what to do. We love to do it.” 

“ But, child ” 

“ First, let me pull out the dampers,” I sug- 
gested, suiting the action to the word and thereby 
stopping the smoking of the range. “ Now 
mustn’t the rolls be made down?” I asked, seeing 
a great pan on the table with the lid sitting rak- 
ishly on one side of a huge mass of dough, already 
risen beyond its bounds. 

“ Yes, but I ” 

“ Let me do that. I love to fool with dough.” 

“ But do you know how? ” 


“ Of course I know how.” 


86 


A HOUSE PARTY 


After a scrubbing of hands made grubby by a 
weed I had pulled up in the garden, I began to 
make down the rolls after the manner approved 
by Mammy Susan, that most exacting of 
teachers. 

“Now what can I do?” demanded Dum. 
“ You must sit still and tell us what next, and 
after we get things under way if you want the 
other girls to help, I’ll call them.” 

“ The breakfast table must be set, — but, my 
dears, I can’t bear to have guests working! Such 
a thing has never been known at Maxton! ” 

Dum hastened to the dining-room where she 
exercised her own sweet will in the setting of the 
table. First she had the joy of cutting a bowl of 
roses for the center. She found mats and nap- 
kins in the great old Shereton sideboard, and 
Canton china that Miss Price told her was the 
kind to use. The silver was still in the master’s 
chamber where it was taken every night by the 
butler and brought out every morning by that 
dignified functionary. I think the non-ap- 
pearance of the butler was almost as great 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 87 

a blow to Miss Price as the defection of the 
cook. 

“ Jasper has been with us since before the war 
and the idea of his behaving this way!” she 
moaned. “ I did not expect anything more from 
these flighty maids and the yard boy, — they have 
only been here five or six years, — but Milly and 
Jasper! ” 

“But maybe they are ill,” I said, trying to' 
soothe her hurt feelings. 

“ I don’t believe a word of it ! How could five 
of them get ill at once? More than likely that 
trifling Willie, the yard boy, has got religion. 
Milly told me he was ‘ seeking ’ and I have 
known there was something the matter with 
him lately, he has been so utterly worthless,” 
and our hostess heaved a sigh with which I 
could thoroughly sympathize. I well knew 
that a “ seeking ” servant was but a poor ex- 
cuse. 

“ How well you do those rolls, my child! Who 
taught you? ” 

Then I told Miss Maria of my old mammy 


88 A HOUSE PARTY 

who had been mother and teacher and nurse for 

me since I was born. 

I shaped pan after pan of turnovers and 
clover-leaves and put them aside for the second 
rising. 

“What next?” 

Miss Maria had decided to give over sighing 
and bemoaning, also apologizing for letting us 
work. She evidently came to the conclusion that 
the headwork had to go on and it was up to her 
to get busy in that line, at least. Dum and I 
were vastly relieved that she consented to sit still, 
as she took up so much room when she moved 
around that she retarded our progress quite a 
good deal. Seated in a corner by the table, she 
could tell us what to do without interrupting 
traffic. 

Herring must be taken out of soak and pre- 
pared for frying; batter bread must be made; ap- 
ples must be fried (she did the slicing) ; coffee 
must be ground; chicken hash must be made after 
a recipe peculiar to Maxton, with green peppers 
sliced in it and a dash of sherry wine. 


WITH THE TUCKEB TWINS 89 

The cooking part was easy, but keeping up the 
fire has always been too much for my limited in- 
telligence. Wood and more wood must be poked 
in the stove at every crucial moment. In the midst 
of beating up an omelette one must stop and 
pile bn more fuel. Peeping in the oven the rolls 
may be rising in regular array with a faint blush 
of brown appearing on each rounded cheek; the 
batter bread may be doing as batter bread should 
do: the crust rising up in sheer pride of its per- 
fection sending forth a delicious odor a little like 
popcorn; — but just then the joy of the vain- 
glorious cook will take a tumble, — the fire must 
be fed. 

“ Now is this what you had planned for break- 
fast, Miss Maria? You see we have got every- 
thing under way, and if there was anything else 
I can do it,” I asked. 

“Of course no breakfast is really complete 
without waffles,” sighed the poor lady, “ at least, 
that is what my brother thinks. He will have to 
do without them this morning, though.” 

“ Why? I can make them and bake them! ” 


90 


A HOUSE PARTY 


“ But, child, you must be seated at the table 
with the other guests. I could not let you work 
so hard.” 

“ But I love to cook! Please let me! ” 

“ All right, but who can bring the hot ones in? 
It takes two to serve waffles. I, alas, am too fat 
to go back and forth.” 

“ Of course I am going to wait on the table,” 
cried Dum, “ and when I drop in my tracks, the 
other girls can go on with the good work.” 

“ Well, well, what good girls you are! I have 
been told that the girls of the present time are 
worthless and I am always reading of their being 
so inferior to their mothers, but I believe I must 
have been misinformed.” 

V I hope you have been,” laughed Dum. “ My 
private opinion is that we are just about the 
same, — some good and some not so good; some 
bad and some not so bad. Anyhow, I am sure 
that there is not a girl on this party who would 
not be proud to help you, or boy, either, for that 
matter.” 

“We shall have to call the boys to our aid, too, 


WITH THE TTJCKEB TWINS 91 

I am afraid/’ said Miss Maria, glancing ruefully 
at the wood-box. “ The wood is low and we 
can’t cook without wood, eh, Page? ” 

“ Won’t I love to see them go to work,” and 
Dum danced up and down the kitchen waving a 
dish-cloth. 

The quiet mansion was astir now. The rising 
bell had routed the sleepy heads out of their beds, 
and from the boys’ wing came shouts of the 
guests who were playing practical jokes on one 
another or merely making a noise from the joy 
of living. Dee and Mary found us in the kitchen 
and roundly berated us for not calling them in 
time to help. Dee reported that Jessie Wilcox 
was still in the throes of dressing. 

“ One of you might go pull some radishes and 
wash them and peel them,” suggested Miss 
Maria. 

Dee was off like a flash and came back with 
some parsley, too, to dress the dishes. 

“ Mary, get the ice and see to the water,” was 
the next command from our general. “ I must 
go now and put on something besides this old 


92 


A HOUSE PAETY 


wrapper/' and our aristocratic hostess sailed to 
the house, her lawn wings spread. 

Our next visitor was General Price himself, 
very courtly and very apologetic and very admir- 
ing. He had just learned of the defection of the 
servants when he called for his boots and they 
were not forthcoming. Jasper had blacked 
his boots and brought them to his door every 
morning for half a century, but no Jasper ap- 
peared on that morning. The boots remained 
unblacked. 

Another duty of the hitherto faithful butler 
had been to concoct for his master and the guests 
a savoiy mint julep in a huge silver goblet. This 
was sent to the guest chambers and every lady 
was supposed to take a sip from the loving cup. 
It was never sent to the boys, as General Price 
frequently asserted that liquor was not intended 
for the youthful male, and that he for one would 
never have on his soul that he had offered a drink 
to a young man. He seemed to have a different 
feeling in regard to the females, thinking perhaps 
that beautiful ladies (and all ladies were beauti- 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 93 

ful ladies in his mind) would never take more 
than the proffered sip. 

On that morning during the big meeting Gen- 
eral Price must make his own julep. This he did 
with much pomp and ceremony, putting back 
breakfast at least ten minutes w T hile he crushed 
ice and measured sugar and the other ingredients 
which shall be nameless. A wonderful frost on 
the silver goblet was the desired result of the 
crushed ice. The mint protruding from the top 
of the goblet looked like innocence itself. The 
odor of the fresh fruit mingling with the vener- 
able concoction of rye was delicious enough to 
make the sternest prohibitionist regret his prin- 
ciples. 

“Now a sip, my dear; the cook must come 
first,” he said, proffering me the completed work 
of art. 

“ Oh no, General Price! I might not take 
even a sip if I am to cook waffles. I might fall 
on the stove.” 

“ A sip will do you good, just a sip ! ” he im- 
plored. 


94 


A HOUSE PARTY 


It was good and just a sip did not do me any 
harm. I had not the heart to deny the courtly 
old man the pleasure of indulging in this rite that 
was as much a part of the daily routine as having 
his boots blacked and brought to his door or con- 
ducting family prayers. 

“ Delicious! ” I gasped. 

“ More delicious now than it was,” he declared, 
“ since those rosy lips have touched the brim,” 
and then he quoted the following lines with old- 
fashioned gallantry: 

“ ‘ Drink to me only with thine eyes, 

And I will pledge with mine; 

Or leave a kiss but in the cup 
And 111 not look for wine. 

The thirst that from the soul doth rise 
Doth ask a drink divine; 

But might I of J ove ’s nectar sup, 

I would not change for thine. 

“ ‘I sent thee late a rosy wreath, 

Not so much honoring thee 

As giving it a hope that there 
It could not withered be; 

But thou thereon didst only breathe, 

And sent’st it back to me; 

Since when it grows, and smells, I swear, 

Not of itself but thee! ’ ” 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 95 

He bowed low and handed me a beautiful rose- 
bud, the same, I believe, before which Dum had 
stood so enthralled earlier in the morning. I 
took a long sniff and then pinned it in my hair, 
much to the old gentleman’s delight. 

He turned away to have another fair guest 
take the prescribed sip, and that naughty Mary 
Flannagan buried her nose in my beautiful rose 
and whispered : 

“But thou thereon didst only breathe, 

And sent’st it back to me ; 

Since when it blows and smells I swear, 

Not of itself but whiskee!” 


CHAPTER VII 


THE REASON WHY 

That was a very merry breakfast. From my 
kitchen fastness I could hear the peals of laugh- 
ter as Mary pretended to be a field hand, brought 
into the dining-room for the first time, to wait 
on the table. I even left my waffles for a moment 
to peep in the door. Dee, who was helping with 
the waiting, spied me and gave the assembled 
company the tip, and before I could get away 
they grabbed me and pulled me into the room 
where I had to listen to three rousing cheers for 
the cook. A batch of waffles burnt up in con- 
sequence, although I ran down the covered way 
like Cinderella when the clock struck twelve. A 
warning smell of something burning gave me to 
understand my time was up. 

Baking waffles is a very exciting pastime. The 

metamorphosis that batter undergoes in almost 
96 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 97 

a twinkling of an eye into beautiful crisp brown 
beauties is a never ending delight and joy to the 
cook. With irons just hot enough (and that is 
very hot indeed) and batter smooth and thin, 
smooth from much beating and thin from much 
milk and many eggs, I believe a baker of waffles 
can extract as much pure pleasure from her pro- 
fession as a great musician can from drawing his 
bow across a choice Cremona; or a poet can from 
turning out successful verse; or a painter from 
watching his picture grow under his skilled 
hands. 

The house-party was full up at last, and then 
the cook and waitress must be seated in the places 
of honor and be waited on by the whole crowd. 
Not quite all of the crowd, I should have said, as 
Jessie was superior to waiting on anybody. She 
seemed quite scornful of us for being able to help 
Miss Maria. 

“ I have never been an adept at the domestic 
arts,” she said somewhat stiffly. “ I could not 
cook or wash dishes if my life depended on it.” 

“Humph!” sniffed Dum, “I reckon you 


98 


A HOUSE PABTY 


could if you got good and hungry. Of course 
you couldn’t do it well, that is, not as well as 
Page, for she can’t be equalled. As for washing 
dishes, — you can take your first lesson after Page 
and Mary and Dee finish breakfast. All of these 
dishes have to be washed and there is no one to 
do it but the house-party.” 

“ Well, I guess not! ” and Jessie looked at her 
pretty soft, beringed hands. 

“Very well then, you can-do the upstairs 
work! Beds must be made, you know! ” 

“Absurd! Do you take me for a housemaid? ” 
“ No, I wouldn’t have you for one, but you 
might get a job for a few hours before the folks 
found out about you.” 

Dum’s tone was rollicking and good-natured. 
She seemed to have no idea that she was insulting 
the pretty Jessie. It never entered Dum’s head 
that anyone would shirk a duty that was so ap- 
parent as taking the work of Maxton in hand. 

I enjoyed that breakfast very much. Harvie 
baked waffles for us and Wink White brought 
them in. The young men from Kentucky ran 


WITH THE TUCKER TWIKS 99 

back and forth waiting on us, all of them making 
more noise and having more collisions than 
would have been the case had a regiment been 
feeding. 

Shorty had already begun to grease the buck- 
saw preparatory to sawing up wood for Miss 
Maria. He and Rags had volunteered to supply 
the fuel. Then the cows must be milked; the 
horses curried and fed; in fact, all the farm work 
must be done. 

I never saw nicer, more considerate boys than 
were on that party. They vied with one another 
in briskness and efficiency. They wanted to 
help us with dishwashing and housework, but 
there was enough outside work to keep them 
busy, and with all good intentions in the world, 
most men-folks are a hindrance rather than a 
help when it comes to so-called woman’s work. 

How we did fly around ! Miss Maria got real 
gay and giddy in the general whirlwind that 
ensued. Dum and Mary undertook to be house- 
maids, and such a spreading up of beds and flick- 
ing of dusters was never known. The beds did 


100 


A HOUSE PAETY 


look a little bumpy, but what difference did it 
make? The dust they swished off with the 
feather dusters settled quietly back on the things, 
but why not? Maxton was beautifully kept and 
very clean but there is always dust on furniture 
in the morning, no matter how well it has been 
cleaned the day before. Jessie’s bed they left 
unmade, declaring that she could sleep in the 
same hole for a month before they would even 
spread it up for her. 

“ Lazy piece! ” cried Dum. “ I actually be- 
lieve she does not mean to turn a hair.” 

That young lady had taken herself off to the 
parlor where she was singing in the most operatic 
manner with a very well-trained strong voice 
with about as much sweetness to it as cut glass. 
The accompaniment she was rendering on the 
piano was brilliantly executed, so much so that I 
thought for a moment she had in a pianola record. 
I peeped in the parlor and smiled at her, fearing 
somehow that she must feel herself to be an out- 
sider and that was why she was not,entering into 
the fun of helping. I got no answering smile 


WITH THE TUCKEE TWINS 101 

but something of a cold stare, so I beat a hasty 
retreat and hastened off to consult with Miss 
Maria about future meals. 

I found that lady sitting on a bench in the 
covered passage leading to the kitchen. Her 
spirit was willing but her flesh was too much for 
her. She must rest. I sank by her, not sorry 
at all to indulge in a little sly resting of my own. 
Cooking is great fun but certainly exhausting. 

“ What for dinner, Miss Maria? ” 

“ Oh, my dear, I can’t contemplate your help- 
ing about dinner, too ! ” 

I couldn’t help having a little inward fun with 
myself over her speaking of my helping. I had 
certainly cooked breakfast myself, but since she 
fooled herself into thinking that I had only 
helped to cook it, it made no difference to me. 

“ But someone will have to cook it unless the 
servants are miraculously cured in time for it.” 
“ That’s so! ” and she sighed a great sigh. 

“ I know you wish we would all of us go home, 
but please don’t wish it. We are having such a 
good time and don’t want to leave one little bit.” 


102 


A HOUSE PAETY 


“ Oh, my dear! Don’t think I could have 
such inhospitabje sentiments. My brother would 
be deeply distressed if he thought you thought I 
thought such things.” 

Both of us laughed at her complicated thinks 
and then began the serious matter of dinner. 

“ Thank goodness, I had those trifling crea- 
tures dress the chickens yesterday. That, at 
least, is out of the way.” 

“ Oh, good! Have you got them all dressed? 
Then let’s have chicken gumbo. If we make 
enough of it, it will be the dinner, with a great 
dish of rice to help in each soup plate.” 

“ Splendid! ” declared Dee, pausing for a mo- 
ment to listen to the proposed menu. “ And it 
will be such an economy in dishes, too. Just a 
plate and spoon all around and no frills.” 

Dee had been as busy as possible washing 
dishes while Miss Maria wiped, and I cleared the 
table. 

“ But, child, can you make a gumbo? It is 
very difficult, I am afraid.” 

“Not a bit of it. I have Mammy Susan’s 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 103 

recipe tucked away somewhere in my brain. I 
can get to work on it immediately and then it will 
be done for dinner. It can’t cook too long.” 

Dee and Wink undertook to gather the vege- 
tables, but they took so long that a relief and 
search party had to be sent to the garden after 
them. 

They were so busy discussing the different 
kinds of bandages that they had forgotten their 
mission. Wink had taken a leaf from Adam’s- 
and-Eve’s-needle-and-thread and was demon- 
strating on Dee’s arm the reverse bandage. Her 
other arm was already decorated with the figure 
eight style made from a long green corn leaf. 
How I wished Wink would treat me as sensibly 
as he did Dee. They seemed to be having such 
a good time as I, who was one of the search 
party, discovered them in the tomato patch sol- 
emnly debating the values of the various styles. 
Now if Wink had ever agreed to discuss such 
a thing as that with me he would have felt com- 
pelled to say all kinds of silly things, and as for 
bandaging my arm, — it would have been out of 


104 


A HOUSE PARTY 


the question, as he would have felt it necessary to 
ask to kiss my hand or some such stuff. 

The right kind of gumbo must have tomatoes, 
okra, potatoes, onions and corn in it, and anyone 
who has served apprenticeship under Mammy 
Susan will make the right kind of gumbo. Miss 
Maria and I started in preparing those vege- 
tables at nine o’clock and it took us one solid 
hour to finish, working as hard as we could go. I 
was beginning to be very fond of the old lady. 
She was so gentle and sweet. I asked her many 
questions about Maxton and its history, and 
since, like many gentlewomen of her age, she 
lived in the past, she was most happy to recount 
to me tales of the lovely old place and its aristo- 
cratic founders 

“ Oh, yes, we have a ghost,” she laughed, when 
I asked her to tell me if there were any such in- 
habitants. “ It is a lady ghost, too, and inhabits 
your wing of the house, as is the way with all the 
ladies of Maxton. It is the young sister of my 
great grandfather, — that makes her my great, 
great aunt.” 


WITH THE TUCKEE TWINS 105 

“ Oh, please tell me about her! ” 

“ Well, all right, if you promise not to get 
scared. The darkies keep such tales going. 
They firmly believe in ghosts, and when they tell 
a ghost story they always say either they them- 
selves have seen the dread shape or they know 
someone who has seen it. This ghost has not been 
seen at Maxton in my generation, but Jasper 
and Milly have heard the tale from their grand- 
parents and they see that it is duly handed down 
to their grandchildren. The appearance of this 
spectre is supposed to presage dire calamity.” 

“ Do you know anyone who has seen it? ” I 
asked, testing the skillet to see if it was hot 
enough to begin frying the chicken. Chicken 
for gumbo must be fried before you start the 
soup, if anything so rich and thick as gumbo 
could be called soup. 

“ I knew an old man who thought he had seen 
it. Well, to go on with my tale: — this young 
great, great aunt of mine was engaged to be mar- 
ried to a gentleman of high degree, much older 
than herself. This of course was back in Colo- 


106 


A HOUSE PARTY 


nial days. She had consented to the match in 
obedience to her father’s commands, but she evi- 
dently did not relish it very much. The day 
came for the wedding and she was dressed in her 
white gown and veil. The company had as- 
sembled from miles around. A boat load of 
guests from Williamsburg had arrived and the 
feasting and dancing had begun. Among them 
was a young blade from over the seas who had 
paid court to the fair Elizabeth, — that was her 
name. It was whispered that she returned his 
love and that was the real reason for her re- 
luctance to mating with the lord of high degree. 

“ After being clothed in the wedding gown, 
Elizabeth had sent the women from her room on 
a plea that sKe must be alone to pray. She 
locked the door the moment they were gone and 
rushed to the window which was open, it being 
a warm moonlight night. Standing below the 
window was the lover. He called up to Her to 
come down to him. The ivy was thick on the 
wall, as it is now, and for an agile young girl I 
fancy it was not such a very difficult climb. If 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 107 

must have taken a brave soul though to make the 
start. Many a time in my youth,” and here Miss 
Maria blushed as red as one of the tomatoes she 
was peeling, “ I have sat in that window, it is the 
room you are occupying, and tried how it would 
seem to climb down that wall. I have never done 
more than poke my foot out about an inch, 
though. Perhaps if the lover had been calling to 
me, it might have given me courage. Elizabeth 
got about half-way down when her long satin 
dress and veil got caught on a nail or snag of 
some sort, and no matter how she pulled she 
could not get loose. Just think of it! There the 
poor girl hung, with her lover frantically calling 
to her and the precious moments flying. Al- 
ready they were knocking on the door of her 
chamber and crying out for admission. His 
steed was ready to fly with her if only she could 
get the gown loose. Material in those days was 
stouter than now. I’ll wager anything that a 
piece of white satin could not be found now that 
would not tear, or any other material, for that 
matter.” 


108 


A HOUSE PARTY 


Remembering Mary’s gown of the night be- 
fore, I readily agreed with her. 

“ Before the miserable lover could mount to 
her side to cut the dress loose, the plot was dis- 
covered and the poor girl had the agony of see- 
ing her true love killed by the infuriated bride- 
groom to be. She swooned and it is said she 
never regained consciousness. Her poor little 
heart must have snapped in two. And now it is 
said that sometimes her white figure can be seen 
hanging from the ivied wall. Once in my youth 
the darkies thought they saw it as they were 
coming home from church on a moonlight night, 
but on investigation it turned out to be a towel 
that had blown out of the window and hung, per- 
haps on the identical nail that was the undoing 
of poor Elizabeth. I remember well,” and she 
laughed like a girl again, “ how scared they all of 
them were. It was in slave days and they were 
forced to come to work the next day, but noth- 
ing but being slaves could have made them 
come.” 

“ Oh, Miss Maria, Miss Maria!” I cried, 


WITH THE TUCKEE TWINS 109 

dropping the potato I was peeling, “ I know 
now what is the matter with your servants. They 
are not ill but they have seen the ghost! ” 

And I told her about Mary’s ambition and her 
escapade of the night before. The old lady al- 
most rolled off her chair she laughed so. She 
was not one bit shocked but vastly interested. 

“ To think of her doing it! No lover was call- 
ing her, either.” 

“ I don’t know about that. How about it, 
Mary? ” I called to my friend who had come 
down to help pick up chips now that the chamber 
work was accomplished. 

When I told Mary about the family ghost 
story and that she was no doubt responsible for 
the non-appearance of the servants, she was over- 
come with confusion. Miss Maria begged her to 
treat the matter as a joke. 

“ Why, my dear, I never would have known 
all you dear girls as I now do if it had not hap- 
pened. You would have come and gone as noth- 
ing but Harvie’s guests, and now you are my 
own true friends. I am glad the reason why is 


110 


A HOUSE PAETY 


unearthed, though, because now we can at least 
make those good-for-nothings come and wash the 
dinner dishes.” She drew Mary down beside her 
on the bench. 

“ But, Mary, you didn’t answer me,” I teased. 
“ I asked you if a lover was calling you when you 
climbed down the wall.” 

“ Yes! He is calling me all the time! ” cried 
Mary, striking an attitude of one being called by 
a lover. “ His name is Douglas Fairbanks.” 

“ Douglas Fairbanks? I don’t know the fam- 
ily,” said dear old puzzled Miss Maria. “ Who 
is Douglas Fairbanks? ” 

“ Why, Miss Maria, he is a movie actor, the 
very best ever! ” explained Mary. 

“ Where did you get to know him, child? 
Who introduced you? ” 

“ I don’t know him, never saw him except on 
the screen ! ” 

“ Ah, I see, a hero of romantic fiction! ” 

“ But he’s not fiction — he’s the realest flesh 
and blood person you ever saw in your life.” 

Then Mary tried to tell our hostess of the 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 111 

wonders of the movie where Douglas was the 
star. The old lady endeavored to take it all in, 
but not having been to the city since the perfect- 
ing of the cineomatograph, it was up-hill work. 
Of course she knew that movies existed, but she 
could not grasp the joy of them, as she had noth- 
ing to go upon but the memory of a magic 
lantern. 

“ Don’t you like the theatre? ” I asked. 

“ Yes, indeed, I like it very much. To be sure 
I have never seen but two performances, but I 
got great enjoyment from them. You must re- 
member, my dears, that I am country bred and 
have had little chance to see the city sights.” 

I never realized before how cut off from the 
world persons are who depend on steamboats. 
Here was this dear lady, born and bred one of 
the finest ladies of the land, but being of a natu- 
rally retiring disposition and always having been 
occupied from her girlhood with keeping house 
she had let the world pass her by. 

“ What were the two things you saw, Miss 
Maria? ” asked Mary gently. 


112 


A HOUSE PAETY 


“ Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch and the 
Old Homestead. I was quite shocked at the 
latter, was really glad I was with a lady. I think 
I would have sunk through the floor from morti- 
fication had there been a gentleman with me.” 

“ The Old Homestead shocking? ” I asked 
wonderingly. “Not the Old Homestead! It 
must have been something else.” 

“ Oh, no, I remember the title distinctly. It 
was when they had that scene with that naked 
statue in the parlor. It was terrible to me.” 

What a compliment to have paid the author 
and actor of that time-honored play! Actually 
the statue of the Venus de Milo had shocked this 
simple soul from the country just exactly as 
Denman Thompson had made it do the old man 
in the melodrama. Mary and I didn’t laugh, but 
we almost burst from not doing so. 

“ And now I must send Harvie down to the 
quarters to make those good-for-nothings return. 
Sick, indeed! I intend to make every last one of 
them take a dose of castor oil and turpentine! ” 

And the intrepid lady was as good as her word. 


CHAPTER VIII 


THE CIRCUS 

The gumbo being made and nothing to do but 
cook it, and that quite slowly, I was able to run 
from my self-imposed duties for a while and join 
the crowd that had formed to go to the negro 
quarters and persuade them that they were not 
sick, that there was no ghost, and that their duty 
and interests lay at Maxton. 

The cabins were at least a quarter of a mile 
from the great house, and very comfortable and 
picturesque they were. The road lay through a 
beautiful oak forest and then skirted a corn field. 
Each cabin had a good piece of ground around it 
and from every chimney there arose a curl of blue 
smoke. They were evidently expecting a visit 
from the family, because there were several little 
pickaninnies waiting at a turn in the road, and 
when they saw us they set off in a great hurry 
shouting: 


113 


114 


A HOUSE PARTY 


“ Dey’s a-comin’ ! Dey’s a-comin’ 1 ” 

“ That’s to give them time to get into bed be- 

* 

fore we get there,” said Harvie sagely. “ I wish 
I knew Latin and Greek as well as I do the 
coloreds’ methods.” 

Sure enough, we could see the little nigs run- 
ning from house to house shouting the warning. 

“ I reckon we would all learn Latin and Greek 
if it was as simple as our friends’ machinations,” 
I said. “ I bet you this minute Aunt Milly is 
stirring up a cake or something for big meetin’ 
and she will have to hurry up and get it out of 
sight.” 

It so happened Aunt Milly’s house was the 
first one we entered. Harvie knocked on the 
door gently and then more briskly when there 
was no answer. Finally a smothered sound 
penetrated the closed door and windows. 
“Ummmm! Ummmm!” Taking it to mean 
we must enter, we opened the door. I sniffed 
pound cake. 

Aunt Milly’s cabin boasted but one room and 
an attic and a lean-to kitchen. The old woman, 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 115 

whose bulk was. only equalled by Miss Maria’s, 
was lying in bed. Her coal black face had no 
look of illness but one of extreme determination. 
She was showing the whites of her eyes like a 
stubborn horse. 

“ How you do, Mr. Harbie? ” she said thickly. 
“ An’ all de yuthers ob you? Won’t you take 
some cheers and set a while? ” 

“ No, thank you, Aunt Milly, we only came to 
see how you were getting on and to tell you that 
Aunt Maria hopes you will be up in time to wash 
the dinner dishes.” 

“ Me? No, Mr. Harbie! I’m feared I is seen 
my last days er serbice.” 

“ Why, Aunt Milly, are you so ill as all 
that?” 

“ Yessir! Yessir! I got a mizry in my back 
an’ my haid is fittin’ tow bus’. I ain’t been able 
to tas’e a mouthful er victuals sence I don’ know 
whin. My lim’s is all of a trimble and looks lak 
my blood is friz in my gizzard.” 

“ Have you had the doctor? ” 

“ No, not to say recent! I was that sorry tow 


116 


A HOUSE PARTY 


lay up whin yo’ comp’ny was a-visitin’ of yo’ 
grandpaw, but whin mawnin’ come I jes’ warn’t 
fitten tow precede.” 

“ It is strange that all of you should have got 
sick the same day, Aunt Milly,” said Harvie, his 
eyes twinkling with his knowledge of the subject. 

“ You don’t say that that there Jasper an’ 
them gals didn’t go do they wuck? ” asked the 
old woman, but her tone was somewhat half- 
hearted. She was evidently not an adept at dis- 
sembling. 

“ Now, Aunt Milly, you know that not a 
single servant turned up at the great house this 
morning, and these young ladies had to do all the 
cooking and housework, and we boys did the out- 
side work. You need not try to make me think 
you didn’t know it. We know exactly what is 
the matter with all of you ” 

“ Laws-a-mussy, Mr. Harbie! Th’ ain’t 
nuthin’ ’tall the matter with me, but I’s plum 
wo’ out. I been a-cookin’ nigh onter mos’ a hun- 
nerd years.” 

“ But all these other servants haven’t been 


WITH THE TUCKEK TWINS 117 

cooking or anything else anywhere near that 
long. We all of us know what is the matter: last 
night coming home from big meeting there 
wasn’t a thing the matter. You all of you meant 
to come back to work this morning. You came 
home late, but you had promised Aunt Maria to 
stay on while my guests were here, and you 
meant to do it. The moon was shining bright 
and just as you came over the hill and got out of 
that bit of pine woods, off there towards the 

landing, you saw a ghost ” 

“ Gawd in heaben, Mr. Harbie! Did you see 
her, too? ” Poor old Aunt Milly’s eyes were al- 
most popping out of her head. 

“ No, I didn’t see her; I wish I had,” and 
Harvie gave Mary a nudge. “ But Miss Page 
Allison here saw it, and Miss Mary Flannagan 
knows all about it because she was the ghost.” 

“ She — she — she was which? ” 

“ It was this way, Aunt Milly,” said Mary, 
going over close to the old woman’s bed. “ I 
wanted to see if I could climb down the ivy on 
the wall outside of our window, and just as all 


118 A HOUSE PARTY 

of you came home from church my — my — gar- 
ment got hung on a nail and I couldn’t budge 
for a moment. I snagged my thumb, too, see! ” 

“ Well, if that don’t beat all! ” was all the old 
woman had strength to say. She threw back the 
bedclothes and disclosed her ample person fully 
clothed in a purple calico dress. “ Hyar, gimme 
room tow git out’n this hyar baid. I’s got a 
poun’ cake a-cookin’ in de oben an’ I s’picion it 
nigh ’bout time ter take it out.” She rolled out 
of bed and waddled to the stove. “ I’s moughty 
skeered the fire done gonter git low while Mr. 
Harbie was a-argufyin’. It would ’a’ made a sad 
streak in my cake, an’ that there is somethin’ I 
ain’t never been guilty ob yit.” 

“ Now, Aunt Milly,” said Harvie, when our 
minds were set at rest as to the perfection of the 
cake which was done to a beautiful golden brown, 
“ you send for the rest of the servants and tell 
them the truth about the ghost and let them know 
they must be up at the great house within an 
hour.” 


“ Sho’! Sho’, child!” she assured him. 


WITH THE TUCKEE TWINS 119 

Grabbing a broom from the corner she jabbed 
it under the bed, thereby causing much squeal- 
ing. Three little darkies rolled out, looking very 
much like moulting chickens from the combina- 
tion of dust and feathers they had picked up 
from their hiding place. 

“ Here you lim’s er Satan! Run an’ fotch all 
de niggers on de plantation and tell ’em I say 
come a-runnin’ tow my cabin as fas’ as they laigs 
kin a carry ’em. You kin tell ’em I’se in a fit 
an’ that’ll fetch ’em.” She chuckled and sank on 
a chair to have her laugh out. 

The three emissaries made all haste with the 
joyful news and in an incredibly short time the 
cabin was full to overflowing. We went out in 
Aunt Milly’s little yard and Harvie mounted 
an old beehive so he could make a speech. Aunt 
Milly drove her black guests out, and they, feel- 
ing they had been cheated of their natural rights 
since she wasn’t having a fit, stood sullenly at at- 
tention while the young master told them the 
truth about the ghost and gave them the ultima- 
tum about returning to Maxton. 


120 


A HOUSE PARTY 


They were not so easy to convince as Aunt 
Milly. Mary’s thumb might have been snagged 
in some other way. Had they not seen the ghost 
with their own eyes, the ghost they had been 
hearing of ever since they were children? When 
news came of Aunt Milly’s being in a fit they 
were sure that the prophetic calamity was upon 
them presaged by the appearance of the ghost. 
Mr. Harvie could talk all he wanted to, but they 
were from Missouri. They had seen and were 
convinced by what they saw. They were respect- 
ful but firm in their attitude of unbelief. Jasper 
spoke: 

“ I ain’t a-gibin’ you de lie, Mr. Harbie, but 
I’ve done seed de ghoses an’ you ain’t. I’s plum 
skeered ter go up ter de gret house. My gran’- 
mammy done tell me yars an’ yars gone by dat 
whin dat ghoses comes fer me to clar out. She 
say she after some nigger, my gran’mammy did. 
De tale runs dat it war a nigger what tole de 
bridegroom dat her beau lover was a-fixin’ ter 
tote her off, an’ whin dat ere ghoses comes she 
ain’t come fer no good.” 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 121 

“ What would make you believe that it was 
not a ghost. Uncle Jasper? ” asked Mary, who 
seemed to feel it was up to her to prove the fal- 
sity of the ghost story. 

“ Nothin’ but seein’ it warn’t. I b’lieve it war 
a ghoses ’cause I seen it war a ghoses, an’ whin I 
see it ain’t a ghoses I gonter b’lieve it warn’t, an’ 
not befo’.” 

Mary drew Tweedles and me off in whispered 
conference and then mounted the beehive by the 
side of Harvie and made her maiden stump 
speech. The darkies clapped with delight. 
They had never seen a female prepare to make a 
speech except under the stress and excitement 
of getting religion. 

“ Ladies and gentlemen ” she began. 

“ Do she mean us? ” came in a hoarse whisper 
from Willie, the yard boy, who was trying to get 
religion but who experienced great difficulties 
because of certain regulations in the way of not 
eating and not laughing. 

“ Yes, I mean you,” cried the orator. “ Since 
I am the person who was climbing out of the 


122 


A HOUSE PARTY 


window last night when you were coming from 
church, and since you will not believe it was not 
a ghost unless you see me do it, I will take the 
liberty to invite all of you up to the big house to 
see the show. It will be a free show, a circus in 
fact, and there may be a few other attractions, 
too. Will you come? ” 

“ Sho’ we’ll come! ” came in a chorus. 

“How ’bout big meetin’?” asked one of the 
housemaids doubtfully. 

“ Pshaw! This kin’ er circus ain’t no harm,” 
declared one of the field hands. “ Didn’t de 
young miss say it war a free circus? ” 

“ Sho’ it’s free an’ ain’t we free, an’ who gon- 
ter gainsay us? ” and the other housemaid tossed 
her bushy head saucily. 

“ Yes, an’ free and free make six an’ six days 
shall we labor an’ do all the wuck, also the play, 
fur the sebenth is the sabbath of the Lawd my 
Gawd! ” cried a voice from behind the cabin, and 
then there came into view the strangest figure I 
have ever beheld. It was a tall gaunt old colored 
man with a straggly grey beard. He was 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 123 

dressed in wide corduroy trousers and top boots ; 
instead of a coat he wore a green cloth basque 
with a coarse lace fichu and tied around his waist 
was a long gingham apron. His hat was a wide 
brimmed black straw trimmed in purple ribbons 
with a red, red rose hanging coyly down over one 
ear. He was smoking a corn-cob pipe. In his 
hand he carried a covered basket. 

“ Lady John!” exclaimed Harvie. “I am 
very glad to see you.” 

“ Well, now ain’t you growed! ” said the crazy 
old man in a voice as soft and feminine as one 
could hear in the whole south; but at that mo- 
ment one of the little pickaninnies tried to peep 
in his basket, and with a masculine roar, he laid 
about him vigorously with his stick, and with a 
deep bass voice gave the little fellow a tongue 
lashing that drove him back into Aunt Milly’s 
cabin. 

It seems that the old man had lost his reason 
many years before and was now obsessed with 
the desire to be considered a woman. He lived 
alone in a cabin some miles from Price’s Land- 


124 A HOUSE PAETY 

ing, growing a little tobacco, enough com for his 
own meal, a little garden truck and a few fruit 
trees. He had some chickens and when he could 
save enough eggs he would bring them over for 
Miss Maria Price to buy. The news of the ghost 
seen at Maxton had traveled to his cabin in that 
wonderful way that news in the country does 
travel, and he had come over to add his quota of 
superstition to the general store. 

Harvie introduced the old man to the members 
of the house-party. He caught hold of his apron 
as though it had been a silken gown and made a 
curtsey to each one. 

“ Lady John, we are just asking all of these 
friends of ours to come up to the great house to 
a kind of circus. They won’t believe that it was 
not a ghost they saw last night clinging to the 
ivy on the east wall and we are going to prove 
it to them. We shall be very glad to see you, too, 
if you want to come.” 

“ Thank you kindly, young marster, thank 
you kindly! I was on my way up there whin the 
crowd concoursing here distracted my intention. 


WITH THE TTJCKEB TWISTS 125 

I’ll be pleased to come, pleased indeed.” He 
spoke in a peculiarly mincing way in a high voice. 

“ I thought you was too pious like to go to 
the circus. Lady John,” giggled the frivolous 
housemaid. 

“ Well, you thought like young niggers think 
— buckeyes is biscuit! ” he declared in his natural 
bass. “ The Bible ’stinctly states that there was 
circuses in them days, an’ I ain’t never heard er 
no calamities a-befallin’ them what was minded 
to intend ’em.” 

“ Is that so? ” asked Dee. “ I can’t remember 
where it said so, but then I do not know the Bible 
as I should.” 

“ Child! Look in the hunnerd chapter er 
Zekelums an’ there you’ll fin’ at the forty-’leventh 
verse that Gawd said to Noah: ‘ Go ye to the 
circus tents of the Fillystimes an’ get all the wile 
animiles that there ye fin’ an’ have a p’rade ’til 
ye gits to the ark of the government.’ Now if’n 
the Lord Gawd warn’t a-tellin’ Noah to git them 
animiles together for a show, what was it for? 
What was it for, I say? ” 


126 


A HOUSE PAKTY 


There was no answer to this pointed remark, 
so he continued: 

“An’ Brother Dan-i-el! Brother Dan-i-el, I 
say ! What was he a-doin’ in a cage of man-eatin’ 
lions for if he.warn’t in a circus? Answer me 
that! And Brother ’Lige! Who ever hearn tell 
of a gold chariot out of a circus p’rade? A char- 
iot of fire! I tell you they was monstous shows 
in them days. If them Bible charack’-ters 
warn’t too good to ack in a circus, I reckon this 
po’ ole nigger ain’t a-goin’ to set up himanher 
self as bein’ above lookin’ on.” 

“ Maybe you will act in our circus then,” sug- 
gested one of the boys. 

“ No, sir! No, sir! I an’ Brother ’Lish will 
be contentment jes’ to look on. Brother ’Lish, 
he didn’t make no move to jine the p’rade whin 
Brother ’Lige wint by in his gran’ chariot. He 
was glad to stan’ aside and let Brother ’Lige git 
all the glory. He caught the velvet cloak with all 
the gran’ ’broidry and was glad to get it. I bet 
nobody shouted louder than him whin Brother 
’Lige stood up ’thout no cloak in his pink tights. 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 127 

I b’lieve that Brother ’Lish was glad to get that 
cloak an’ it come in mighty handy, ’cause they 
do say that whin he was a-sittin’ in Brother 
’Lige’s cabin that very night, the mantel fell on 
him. No, sir, it never hurt him at all, but I 
reckon they couldn’t have much fire ’til they got 
it put back. But he had the cloak to wrop up in.” 

This delightfully original interpretation of the 
scriptures fascinated all of us. I could see Mary 
was listening very attentively to Lady John. 
He would be another stunt for the clever girl. 
Mary was a great impersonator and could mimic 
anything or anybody. 

“ Are you going to have the circus after din- 
ner or before? ” asked one of the party. 

“Before!” cried Mary. “I’d be afraid to 
trust the ivy with my weight plus the gumbo I 
intend to eat.” 


CHAPTER IX 


THE PERFORMANCE 

When we got back to Maxton, whom should 
we find sitting on the bench by Miss Maria but 
Mr. Jeffry Tucker? He looked as though he had 
known her all her life and no one would have 
dreamed that this was his second meeting with 
her. His first had been the summer before when 
that enterprising gentleman had made a trip to 
Price’s Landing to persuade Mr. Pore to wake 
up to the fact that Annie was invited to go to 
Willoughby on a beach party and that all he had 
to do was let her go. 

“Zebedee, darling! Where did you come 
from?” cried Dee, breaking away from the 
crowd as she spied her youthful father and racing 
like a wild Indian to get the first hug. 

“Richmond via Henry Ford!” he managed 
to get out as Dum scrouged in for her share of 
hugging. 


128 


WITH THE TTJCKER TWINS 129 

“ And, Page! Little friend! ” he said, freeing 
one of his hands and clasping mine. 

How I did love to be called his little friend! 
He never called me that in a way that made me 
feel young and silly, either, but somehow he gave 
me the impression that he was depending on me, 
I don’t know just for what but for something. 
I was as glad to see him as his own Tweedles 
were, I am sure. 

“ Did you come down alone? ” 1 asked. 

“ No, indeed, I had the pleasure of the learned 
discourse of Mr. Arthur Ponsonby Pore on my 
journey hither.” 

“ Oh, good! He is back, then, and maybe we 
can have Annie,” said Dee. 

“ She is upstairs now,” announced that won- 
derful man. 

“ Oh, Zebedee! I just knew you could work 
it ! ” and Dee gave him another bear hug for luck. 

Dee had sent a telegram to her father asking 
him to get hold of Mr. Pore and persuade him 
to hurry back and release Annie. 

Miss Maria was anxious to hear of our success 


130 A HOUSE PAETY 

with the servants and was delighted to know of 

their contemplated return. When we told her 

that the only way to get them back was to have 

a circus, she was greatly amused. Zebedee, of 

course, entered into the scheme with his usual 

enthusiasm. 

“ When is it to be?” 

“Now!” I answered. “The darkies are on 
their way, ten thousand strong.” 

“ But, my dear, there are only five house serv- 
ants,” said Miss Maria. 

“Yes, hut all the field hands had laid off, too, 
because of the ghost. I fancy all of the colored 
people from the quarters are coming up to be 
convinced against their will that the ghost was 
not a ghost.” 

“ But suppose Mary can’t climb down again. 
She might kill herself this time,” wailed the poor 
hostess. 

“Not at all!” I reassured her. “It will be 
much easier to do it in daylight than in dark- 
ness.” 

“ Of course it will ! ” declared the intrepid 


WITH THE TUCKER TWIKS 131 

movie star. “ And, besides, last night was only 
the dress rehearsal, and all actors say that the 
dress rehearsal is much more nervous work than 
the real performance. Now I must go dress my 
part,” and so we raced up to our room where we 
found dear Annie unpacking her suitcase with 
such a happy smile on her face that she looked 
like an angel. 

How we did chatter! We had to tell her all 
about our plan for the society circus. Looking 
out of the window where Mary was to make her 
fearsome descent, Annie shuddered. 

“ I don’t see how you can do it.” 

“ If you only could, what a bride you would 
make ! ” exclaimed Mary. 

Mary had determined to dress as a bride and- 
now began the work of finding suitable duds. 
Miss Maria came in to assist just when we were 
beginning to despair. None of us was blessed 
with enough clothes to be willing to spare any of 
them for such a hazardous undertaking, none 
save Jessie Wilcox and she had them to spare, 
but we would not have asked her for any to save 


132 


A HOUSE PAETY 


her. That superior young lady had been quite 
scornful of us while we were working and then 
afterwards on the walk to the quarters. Now 
she had gone off for a row on the river with 
Wink, who seemed to think that when I was so 
enthusiastic over the arrival of the father of my 
best friends he had a personal grievance. He 
liked Zebedee a great deal himself but seemed to 
think I did not have the same right. I am sure 
Jessie was a brave girl to go rowing with a man 
who had such a one-sided way of looking at 
things. Anyone with such a biased judg- 
ment could not be trusted to trim a boat, I 
felt. 

When Miss Maria found out our trouble, she 
had Harvie bring from the attic a little old hair- 
cloth trunk, and throwing it open, told us to help 
ourselves. It was filled with all kinds of old- 
fashioned gowns, some of them of rich brocade 
and some of flowered chintz. At the very bottom 
we unearthed a wedding dress which had be- 
longed to some dead and gone Price, Miss Maria 
did not even know to whom. It was yellow with 


WITH THE TUCKEK TWIKS 133 

age but had not a break in it. It was some 
squeeze to get the bunchy Mary in it, but with 
much pulling in and holding of the breath we 
finally got it hooked. 

“ And here’s a veil ! ” cried Dum, who had been 
standing on her head in the trunk hunting for 
treasures. 

It was nothing but a piece of white mosquito 
netting that had been put in this trunk by mis- 
take evidently, but it was quite a find to us, and 
with a few dexterous twists we had Mary stand- 
ing before us a blushing bride. 

“ How about your shoes, Mary?” I asked. 
“ Last night you said you had to have bare toes 
to dig in the wall.” 

“ So I have! Gee, what are we to do about it? 
It would never do to have a barefoot bride; but I 
simply could not climb down in shoes.” 

“ I have it! ” cried Dum. “ Let’s have a cava- 
lier down on the ground, your ‘ beau lover,’ you 
know, like the Elizabeth of long ago, and you 
take off your slippers and throw them down to 
him.” 


134 


A HOUSE PAETY 


“ Good! Page, please go tell Shorty I need 
him.” 

Shorty was game and in a twinkling of an eye 
we had him rigged out as a very presentable if 
rather youthful “ beau lover.” 

The darkies had come and were seated on the 
ground about twenty feet from the house. News 
of a free show had spread like wildfire and I am 
sure at least fifteen were gathered there. It 
seemed hard that we must amuse fifteen to get 
five. 

The show opened with a boxing match between 
the young men from Kentucky, Jack Bennett 
and Billy Somers. This was most exciting and 
nothing but the presence of General Price kept 
the darkies from putting up bets on the fight. 

Next on the program was the Tuckers’ stunt: 
Dum and Dee, back to back, were buttoned up 
in two sweaters which they put on hind part be- 
fore and then fastened on the side, Dum’s to 
Dee’s and Dee’s to Dum’s. 

“ This, Ladies and Gentlemen,” said Zebedee* 
who was doing the part of showmaster, “ is Milly 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 135 

Christine, the two-headed woman. She is the 
most remarkable freak of nature in the world to- 
day. She has two heads, four legs, four arms, 
but only one body. She is very well educated 
and can speak several languages at the same 
time. She also can sing a duet with herself (at 
least she thinks she can). Fortunately she is in 
love with herself, otherwise she would get very 
bored with herself. There is only one difficulty 
about being this kind of a twin: if you don’t like 
what your twin likes you have to lump it. Now 
Hilly, here, sometimes eats onions and poor 
Christine has to go around with the odor on her 
breath; and Christine got her feet wet and poor 
Milly has caught a bad cold from it.” With this 
Dee sneezed violently, a regular Tucker sneeze 
which was as good as a show any time. “ Milly 
is always getting sleepy and wanting to go to 
bed when Christine feels like dancing.” Dee put 
her head on her breast and gave forth stertorous 
snores while Dum gaily waltzed around drag- 
ging the sleeping twin. There were roars of ap- 
plause. 


136 A HOUSE PAETY 

Next Harvie came around the house walking 
on his hands and Jim Hart doing cartwheels. 
Rags had the stunt known as “ Come on, Eph! ” 

It is a strange thing, where the performer 
wiggles and shakes himself until his clothes seem 
to be slipping off. All the time he emits sounds 
from which one gathers that he wants Eph to 
come on. This brought down the house and . 
Rags had an encore. 

I had to dance “ going to church ” while the 
twins patted for me. I never did have any little 
parlor tricks but they would not let me off. The 
darkies treated it quite seriously and when I 
went around shaking hands, which is part of the 
dance, they arose and joined the dance. This 
broke the ice and warmed them up for the ghost 
scene soon to follow. 

The circus was proving a great success. The 
rows of happy black faces gave evidence of that. 
We had decided to have some music next, but 
made the great mistake of putting Annie on the 
program ahead of Jessie. It was taken as an- 
insult and that spoiled piece refused to sing at 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 137 

all. Annie sang charmingly, however. She ac- 
companied herself on a banjo, and if my dance 
had started the darkies, her song got them all 
going. She sang, “ Clar de Kitchen.” I wonder 
if my readers know that old song. It was famous 
once on every plantation but in this day of rag 
time and imitation darky songs one hardly ever 
hears it. 

Clar de Kitchen 
In oP Ken tuck, in de artemoon, 

We sweep de flo’ wid a bran new broom, 

And arter dat we form a ring, 

And dis de song dat we do sing : 

Chorus — 

0, clar de kitchen, oP folks, young folks, 

Clar de kitchen, oP folks, young folks, 

OP Virginy never, never tire. 

I went to de creek, I couldn’t get across, 

I’d nobody wid me but a ol’ blin’ horse; 

But ol’ Jim Crow come a-ridin’ by, 

Says he, “OP fellow, yo’ horse will die.” 

It’s clar de kitchen, etc. 

My horse fell down upon de spot. 

Says he, “Don’t you see his eyes is sot?” 

So I took out my knife, and off wid his skin, 

When he comes to life I’ll ride him agin. 

So clar de kitchen, etc. 


138 


A HOUSE PARTY 


A jay-bird sat on a hickory limb — 

He winked at me and I winked at him ; 

I picked up a stone and I hit his shin, 

Says he, “ You’d better not do dat agin.” 

So clar de kitchen, etc. 

A bull-frog, dressed in soger’s clothes, 

Went in de field to shoot some crows; 

De crows smell powder and fly away — 

De bull-frog mighty mad dat day. 

So clar de kitchen, etc. 

I hab a sweetheart in dis town, 

She wears a yaller striped gown ; 

And when she walks de streets around, 

De hollow of her foot makes a hole in de ground. 
Now clar de kitchen, etc. 

Dis love is a ticklish ting, you know, 

It makes a body feel all over so ; 

I put de question to Coal-Black Rose, 

She’s as black as ten of spades, and got a lubly 
flat nose. 

Now clar de kitchen, etc. 

“Go away,” says she, “wid your cowcumber shin, 

If you come here agin I stick you wid a pin.’ ’ 

So I turn on my heel, and I bid her good-bye, 
And arter I was gone she began for to cry. 

So clar de kitchen, etc. 

So now I’se up and off you see, 

To take a julep sangaree ; 

I’ll sit upon a tater hill 
And eat a little whip-poor-will. 

So clar de kitchen, etc. 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 


139 


I wish I was back in ol ’ Kentuck, 

For since I lef ’ it I had no luck — 

De gals so proud dey won’t eat mnsh; 

And when you go to court ’em dey say,“0, hush!” 

Now clar de kitchen, etc. 

Of course before Annie got through, every- 
body was joining in the chorus, and the darkies 
were patting and some of them dancing. There 
wasn’t the ghost of a ghost in their minds now 
and really we might have dispensed with the 
grand finale as far as they were concerned. 
Maxton was no longer a place to be shunned; but 
Mary was to go through with her act before 
lunch and I for one knew that that gumbo was 
stewing down mighty thick. I stole off once and 
stirred it and put it back a little. 


CHAPTER X 


THE GHOST OF A GHOST 

The last patter occasioned by Annie’s spirited 
tune had died away and a sudden hush fell upon 
the seated throng. It was time for the great act. 
We thought the impressiveness of the scene 
would be heightened if someone would tell the 
story. General Price suggested Lady John as 
the best raconteur of the neighborhood. Of 
course Lady John was more than pleased to 
comply. He loved to be in the lime light and to 
show off. This was his opportunity. 

“ Ladies, gemmen an’ niggers, what ain’t 
neither, some er you,” he declaimed, standing up 
on an ivy-covered stump and making his inimi- 
table curtsey, “ I is a-makin’ this speechifying at 
the inquest of the white folks an’ if respec’ is not 
handed to me it is also infused to them.” That 
rather silenced the tittering that Lady John’s 
elevation had caused. 


140 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 141 

“ Gen’l Price is inquested me to lay befo’ de 
meetin’ de gospel of de ghoses what is thought 
by some to hant these here abode of plenty. 
Without more pilaverin’ I'll lay holt the shank 
of the tale. — Mos’ about a thousan’ years ago 
whin my gran’mammy warn’t mo’n a baby an’ 
Gen’l Price here, savin’ his presence, warn’t even 
so much as thought about although his amces- 
troms were abidin’ here, the tale runs they war 
a young miss of the family by name Lizzy Betty. 
Miss Lizzy Betty war that sweet an’ that putty 
that all the young gemmen war mos’ ready to 
eat her up. Ev’y steamboat that come a-sailin’ 
up de ribber brought beaux for Miss Lizzy 
Betty. One young man come all dressed in gold 
an’ wid a long feather in his hat an’ a sword as 
long as a hoe han’le. He had no land an’ he had 
no boat but he come on his hoss a-ridin’ ober de 
hills, an’ Miss Lizzy Betty she done tol’ him she 
would be his’n through sickness an’ through 
healthfulness. — But, ladies an’ gemmen an’ you 
niggers what is ’havin’ better’n I ever seed you 
’have befo’, oP Marse Price he got yuther no- 


142 A HOUSE PAETY 

tions in his haid. He see no reason why Miss 
Lizzy Betty shouldn’t marry to suit him stid er 
herse’f. They was a rich ol’ man what didn’t 
carry all his b’longin’s on his back, an’ ol’ Marse 
Price he go to de sto’ an’ come back with a dress 
an’ veil for Miss Lizzy Betty an’ he say fer her 
to go put it on an’ he’d fotch the preacher. An’ 
’twas all the po’ young thing could do to git 
word to her beau lover. All the comp’ny was 
dissembled an’ de bride had comb out her har an’ 
put on de dress an’ veil, whin she say to her 
frien’s an’ de nigger maid fer them to lef her 
alone fer a moment so she could wrastle in 
prayer. So so soon as they got out her room, she 
locked de do’ an’ thin she peeped out’n de win- 
der, an’ thar, kind an’ true, was de beau 
lover.” 

At this point Mary poked her head out of the 
window and Shorty appeared below brave in all 
his finery, although it was not of pure gold as in 
Lady John’s version. This was some astonish- 
ment to the old tale teller and he stopped in his 
narrative. 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 143 

“Hist!” called the bride to Shorty below. 
“ Are you there, sweetheart? ” 

“ Aye, aye! ” answered the future bluejacket. 
“ Can you climb down the wall or shall I come 
up to you and carry you off in my flying ma- 
chine? ” 

“ I am coming down! ” choked Mary. “ But, 
Algernon, I cannot scale the fearsome wall in 
shoes and hose; what must I do?” 

“ Take them off, fair Lizzy Betty, and throw 
them down to me.” 

With that, Mary threw down to the faithful 
Shorty some huge tennis shoes, the property of 
Harvie. Shorty caught them, one at a time, 
and each catch felled him to the earth, much to 
the delight of the audience. 

Then began the dangerous act. The agile 
Lizzy Betty was out of the window in a twin- 
kling of an eye. Her mosquito net veil floated in 
the breezes. Her satin train she managed with 
great dexterity, kicking it from her, thereby dis- 
closing to view the blue serge gym bloomers she 
was wearing. She swung herself down until 


144 "A HOUSE PAETY 

midway she came upon the fated snag; there she 

paused and deliberately hooked her veil in the 

nail. 

Here old Lady John, seeing his chance, took 
up the tale and began: 

“ As Miss Lizzy Betty was a-hurryin’ down, 
an* she sho’ could clam like a cat, she got her 
finery cotched on a rusty nail, an’ thar she hung 
as helpless as a o 1’ coon skin tacked on de barn 
do’. De beau lover he dance up an’ down like he 
goin’ crazy.” 

Shorty began to prance and cry out to his lady 
love; but she hung there weeping in loud boo 
hoos. 

“ Bymby o 1’ Marse Price ’gun ter ’spicion . 
sompen, an’ he up’n bang on de chamber do’. 

* Hyar there, Lizzy Betty! Come on an’ git 
married ! The victuals is a-gittin’ col’ whilst you 
is a-prayin’.’ Po’ Miss Lizzy Betty could a-hear 
’em hollerin’ and heatin’ an’ bangin’, an’ still her 
dress it cotch on de nail. Jes’ then de rich ol’ 
bridegroom come a-shamblin’ roun’ de house, an’ 
he an’ de beau lover clasp one anudder in mortal 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 145 

death grips. De ol’ man, he got so dost to him 
dat de sword what was as long as a hoe han’le 
didn’ do de beau lover no good whatsomever, but 
de liT penknife what de o F man carry for to 
whittle with went clean home to de beau lover’s 
heart.” 

At the proper cue, Wink, who had submitted 
to be dressed up in a red table cover with a Santa 
Klaus beard made out of a switch borrowed from 
Miss Maria, came sidling around the house. 

“Vilyun!” he cried, and grabbing Shorty 
around the waist, they wrestled and swayed un- 
til Shorty’s long silk stockings, borrowed from 
Dum, came down and hung around his feet, and 
his fancy trunks, nothing more nor less than a 
bathing suit carefully rolled up, came unrolled 
and hung down in a most ludicrous manner. 
Finally the deadly penknife was dug into his ribs 
and he expired, calling to the lovely Lizzy Betty. 

“ An’ de lubly Miss Lizzy Betty, she tuk a fit 
then an’ thar an’ if’n her paw hadn’t er got a 
ladder an’ gone up’n unhooked her, she’d a-been 
hangin’ thar yit, same as in dis hyar circus,” and 


146 


A HOUSE PARTY 


Lady John pointed impressively at the bunchy 
figure of Mary clinging to the ivy with fingers, 
teeth and toe-nails. 

The applause could have been hea^d down at 
the landing, I am sure. Mary unfastened her 
mosquito net veil from her head and finished her 
descent, leaving the veil caught to the snag. 

“ Now, you black rascals,” cried General 
Price, “ you can see the ghost any night you’ve a 
mind. There she hangs, and I reckon I’ll leave 
her there to shame you with. Now get to work ! ” 

His words were stem hut his face wore a smile 
and his tone was kindly.” The field hands went 
off to work, the uninvited guests melted away, 
and the house servants took up their tasks where 
we had left off. 

Willie, the yard boy, wore a broad grin on his 
countenance. I heard him say to one of the 
housemaids : 

“ I done mist my chanst for de kingdom dis 
year. I ’lowed I’d come through to-night, but 
these hyar carryin’s on done flimflammed me. I 
been a-laughin’ an’ singin’ an’ what’s more 


WITH THE TUCKEE TWINS 147 

a-dancin’, an’ ’twarn’t no David a- dancin’ befo’ 
de Lord, nuther. ’Twas jes’ a-pattin’ an’ Clar 
de Kitchen dance. I hear rumors of gumbo for 
dinner, too, an’ I sho’ is glad I done turned from 
grace. I hope de young misses what concocted 
of de gumbo done put my name in de pot. Dis 
here seekin’ is pow’ful appetizin’.” 

Our circus had been a decided success. Old 
and young, black and white had enjoyed it. 
Mary felt that she had redeemed herself. Had 
she not scared the servants off and then wiled 
them back? Had she not held thousands thrilled 
and breathless while she made her perilous de- 
scent? 

“ It is wonderful for you to be able to climb 
that way,” said our courtly host. “ I have never 
seen a young lady so agile.” 

“ But I shall have to learn to climb in shoes,” 
sighed our movie star. “ Douglas Fairbanks 
can.” 


CHAPTER XI 


THE PICNIC 

When a crowd of young people get together 
there is sure to be a picnic if there is a spark of 
life in them. There were many sparks of life in 
this crowd, enough to supply many picnics. 

We had been at Maxton ten days when the 
picnic came off, and we had had ten days of un- 
alloyed fun. Of course, we had many gags on 
each other and jokes that were only jokes be- 
cause we were on a house-party together. Those 
jokes if told would sound very flat, indeed. I 
believe there is no bore so great as the person 
who has been off with a crowd for a fortnight and 
comes back and tries to bring to life all the silly 
jokes that were perpetrated. They may have 
been brilliant and witty at the time, but it takes 
the setting and the circumstance to make them 
appear so to someone not blessed with an in- 
vitation to said house-party. 

148 


WITH THE TUCKEK TWINS 149 

Mr. Tucker had come and gone and come 
again when we decided to go on the picnic. His 
faithful Henry Ford could bring him to Price’s 
Landing in about one-fourth of the time it took 
if one trusted to the deliberate meanderings of 
the steamboat. He was a favorite with all of the 
party, young and old, and his arrival was hailed 
with delight. Miss Maria put on her best and 
filmiest lace cap for his benefit, and to her de- 
light, that wonderful man noticed it and talked to 
her about old lace with a knowledge that as- 
tounded her. 

He told me afterwards he found lace a 
topic which always interested old ladies, so he 
had deliberately made it his business to find out 
about lace and be prepared to converse on the 
subject. He also had some general knowledge 
of crochet stitches, and knew how much yarn it 
took to knit a sweater. It was too ludicrous to 
see him solemnly talking fancy work with some 
ancient dame. Tweedles and I have been sent 
off into hysterics when we have found him bend- 
ing over a rainbow afghan, with some old lady 


150 


A HOUSE PARTY 


eagerly asking his advice as to the depth of the 
border or something else equally feminine. He 
seldom went home, after a week-end spent at 
some resort, that he did not have a commission 
to match embroidery silk for some lady who had 
calculated wrong, or send back a bale of wool for 
some energetic person who had suddenly decided 
to knit socks for the poor Belgians or a sweater 
for a long-suffering male relative. Certainly 
Zebedee’s interest and knowledge on the subject 
of lace caps would have won Miss Maria’s affec- 
tions had they not already been his. 

General Price was as glad to see him as was 
his old sister. Of course, the European war was 
of paramount interest to everyone during those 
years, and Jeffry Tucker alwaj^s brought some 
item of news to be recounted and discussed. He 
came laden with newspapers and magazines, and 
the general would bury himself under them, only 
emerging for meals. He and Zebedee would 
spend hours discussing the situation. Topo- 
graphical maps were studied until one would 
think those two gentlemen could have found 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 151 

their way blindfolded over every inch of the west- 
ern front. 

The Mexican situation, too, must be thor- 
oughly threshed out. The old warrior was like 
some ancient war horse that sniffs the battle 
from afar. As a veteran of the Civil War he had 
many experiences to recount and analogies to 
bring forth. Mr. Tucker listened to him with an 
attention that was most flattering. Naturally 
General Price freely announced that Tucker was 
the most agreeable man of his acquaintance. 

Mr. Arthur Ponsonby Pore spent one evening 
with us at Maxton and the general and Zebedee 
hoped to get some new outlook from their Eng- 
lish acquaintance on the subject of the war that 
so nearly touched him, since many of his kinsmen 
must surely be in the trenches; but Mr. Pore’s 
interest seemed purely academic, and as his 
knowledge was principally gained from two- and 
three-week-old London Graphics , those vora- 
cious gentlemen got but little satisfaction from 
the hours spent with Arthur Ponsonby. 

“ He cares more about what language will 


152 


A HOUSE PAETY 


finally be spoken on the Servian border than he 
does about the submarine menace !” cried Zebe- 
dee indignantly, coming out on the gallery where 
I was getting a breath of air after a particularly 
trying dance with poor Wink, who never had 
learned how. We danced almost every night at 
Maxton, — tread many a measure, as our dear old 
host put it. Dee said she thought Wink was a 
good dancer and she seemed to be able to keep 
step with him very well, but the Gods evidently 
had ordained that Wink and I could do nothing 
in harmony. He either stepped on my toes or I 
stepped on his, — the latter arrangement I much 
preferred. 

“ Well, when you come right down to it,” I 
said, defending poor Mr. Pore, “ that is, after 
all, a very important thing. What language is to 
be spoken there will mean which side is victori- 
ous.” 

“ I know that, little Miss Smarty, but I also 
know if I have to listen any longer to that Brit- 
isher’s rounded periods, what language will be 
spoken here, — it will not be fit to print, either. 


WITH THE TTJCKEE TWIKS 153 

How can a man sit still down on the banks of a 
river in a foreign country and feel that it is not 
up to him to do a single thing for his country 
when her very existence is in peril! ” 

“ But what can he do? ” 

“ Do? Heavens, Page, he can do a million 
things ! ” 

“ He is too old to fight.” 

“No one is ever too old to fight, — that is, to 
put up some kind of a fight. He does not even 
contribute to a relief fund! He as good as told 
me he did not. He says he is afraid that what he 
sent might fall into the hands of the Germans 
and help them, so he considers it more patriotic 
not to send anything. I’ve been taking up for 
that man against Tweedles, but ugh! I’m 
through now.” 

“Oh no, you are not,” I laughed; “if Mr. 
Pore should come out on the porch this minute 
and ask a favor of you, I bet you would be just 
as nice to him as you always have been.” 

“Never! Five pounds of Huyler’s if I am 
not as cold as a fish to His Nibs! ” 


154 A HOUSE PARTY 

At this psychological moment His Nibs ap- 
peared. 

“ Aw, I say, Sir. Tucker, when you return to 
Richmond, will you be so kind as to do a little 
commission for me? ” 

Zebedee made inarticulate noises in his throat 
and Mr. Pore continued: 

“ Some freight has gone astray and if you 
could look it up from that end, it would be of 
great assistance to me.” 

“ Have you written about it? ” Zebedee’s 
manner was not quite so Zebedeeish as I could 
have wished, since five pounds of Huyler’s was 
at stake. 

“ No, I have not corresponded with the whole- 
sale firm from whom I purchased the goods, as 
I heard from my daughter that you were ex- 
pected, and I considered that it would be much 
more satisfactory to all concerned if you could 
give it your personal attention.” 

As soon as Mr. Pore mentioned Annie, Zebe- 
dee seemed to have a change of heart. He evi- 
dently felt that Annie’s father must be cajoled 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 155 

into good behavior, and nothing must be done or 
said to make that stubborn parent have an excuse 
for taking any pleasures from Annie. 

“ Certainly, Mr. Pore,” he said politely, if a 
little distantly. “ Just give me your bill of 
lading and I will look into the matter for 
you.” 

In my mind’s eye I saw the five pounds of 
candy. I had certainly won. But was it fair of 
me to take advantage of poor Zebedee’s tender 
heart? Certainly not! 

“ Shall it be chocolates? ” he asked, when Mr* 
Pore had finished his transaction and taken him- 
self off. 

“ It shall be nothing! ” I exclaimed. “ Don’t 
you know I know why you were decent to the 
old fish? It was not just plain politeness that 
made you do it, it was your feeling for Annie, 
poor little thing! 

“ How do you know so mtich? ” 

“ Why, I saw you change your mind the mo- 
ment he dragged in Annie, and I knew what you 
were thinking just as much as though you had 


156 A HOUSE PARTY 

said it aloud: ‘ Don’t do anything to make things 

hard for Annie.’ Now isn’t that so? ” 

“Page, you are uncanny! Can you read 
everybody’s mind? ” 

“ Of course not! Only yours,” I laughed. 

“ Do you know what I am thinking now? ” 
He looked at me very intently. The light from 
the hall was flooding the gallery and I could see 
way down into his clear blue eyes. 

“ N-o! ” I hesitated, and I am afraid blushed, 
too. “ But I wish you would think that it would 
be nice to go try that new wiggly dance Jessie 
Wilcox has just brought from New York.” 

“ I see, if you can’t read my mind all the time, 
you can at least make me think what you want 
me to. Come on, honey, and show me the dance.” 

I got the candy in spite of my protestations of 
not deserving it. 

The picnic was to be at Croxton’s Ford, a 
beautiful spot about three miles down the river. 
The naphtha launch held eight quite comfortably 
and the rest were to go in rowboats. Mary and 
Shorty insisted upon paddling the canoe, al- 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 157 

though they were warned that it would be a tir- 
ing job, especially coming back. 

Miss Maria had planned to go with us al- 
though an all day picnic was a great undertaking 
for one of her shape, but she was very particular 
with girls intrusted to her and chaperoned most 
religiously. On the very morning of the picnic, 
sciatica seized her and she simply could not get 
out of bed. The general had business at the 
court-house and was off very early in the morn- 
ing, so his going was out of the question. Miss 
Maria lay there groaning and moaning, miser- 
able that her conscience could not consent to our 
going on such a jaunt, unchaperoned. As 
Tweedles and I had never been overchaperoned, 
in fact knew very little about such necessities, it 
seemed absurd to us. 

“ Do you really mean we can’t go without a 
chaperone? ” wailed Dum, who had set her heart 
on a long row in a little red boat that appealed to 
her especially. 

“ My dear, I am so sorry ! I would get up if 


I could.” 


158 


A HOUSE PARTY 


“ But I wouldn’t have you get up, dear Miss 
Maria. I just want you to lie still and get well. 
We don’t need a chaperone! ” 

“ I know you don’t need one, my child, but I 
have never heard of a picnic at Croxton’s Ford 
without a chaperone.” 

“ But Zebedee’s a grand chaperone,” put in 
Dee. “ He is that particular! Why, Dum and 
Page and I have never been chaperoned in our 
lives.” 

“ Zebedee’s the strictest thing!” maintained 
Dum. 

“ So he may be,” smiled the old lady, although 
one could see that the twinges in her poor hip 
were giving her great agony, “ but as perfect as 
he is, he is not a woman.” * 

“ No, — he is certainly not that.” 

“ Jessie Wilcox has never been on a picnic in 
her life without a chaperone, and I could not con- 
sent to one from Maxton unless it was perfectly 
regular.” 

A tap on the door disclosed the sympathetic 
Zebedee. 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 159 

“ Please let me come in,” he begged. 

After a hasty donning of boudoir cap and bed 
sacque, he was admitted. 

“ Mr. Tucker, I am so sorry, but I cannot let 
the girls go on a picnic without a chaperone,” 
said the old lady. 

“Of course not!” and his eyes twinkled. 
“ I’m going, though, and I am a perfect ogre of 
a chaperone, eh, Page? ” 

“Yes, something fierce, but Miss Maria says 
you are not a woman.” 

“ That’s so! ” he said, puckering up his brows. 
We were mortally sure he was going to find a 
way. He always did. “ How about Aunt 
Milly? She is perfectly respectable and would 
guard the young ladies like gold, I am sure.” 

“ We-11, I remember before the war we often 
went great distances with our maids. I think 
she would do. Please send her to me.” 

Zebedee rushed to do her bidding, but he evi- 
dently had an interview with Aunt Milly before 
he sent her to Miss Maria, as that old darky 
entered the bed chamber in a broad grin, tying 


160 A HOUSE PARTY 

something up in the corner of her bandanna 

handkerchief as she came. 

“ Milly, I want you to chaperone for me to- 
day,” said the poor invalid, groaning as she 
tried to move a bit in her great mahogany 
bed. 

“ Sho’, Miss Maria! Does you want me to do 
it wif goose grease? Or maybe you’d like dat 
mixture er coal ile an’ pneumonia? Dat’s a great 
mixture. ’Twill bun you up but it sho’ do scatter 
de pain.” 

“ I don’t mean massage, I said chaperone,” 
and Miss Maria laughed in spite of her sciatic 
nerve. 

“ Yassum! I ’lowed you meant rub, an’ I’s 
mo’n willin’ to rub. You’ll hab to ’splain. I 
ain’t quite sho’ in my min’ what shopper-roonin’ 
is, but if it’ll ease yo’ pain, you kin jes’ call on 61 ’ 
Milly.” 

“ It would ease my pain greatly if you would 
go with the young ladies on the picnic.” 

“ Cook for ’em? ” 

“ Oh no, Aunt Milly,” I interrupted, “ we 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 161 

never let the chaperone cook, — just to look after 
us and keep us straight.” 

“ Lawsamussy, chile! You all don’t need no- 
body to keep you straight. Th’ ain’t nothin’ 
wrong wid you all but jes’ you’s a little coltish.” 

“ I know they don’t need anyone, Milly, but I 
have never heard of a picnic at Croxton’s Ford 
without a chaperone, and I wouldn’t be willing 
for them to go without one.” 

“All right, Miss Maria! But you ain’t 
thinkin’ ’bout sendin’ me nowhar in one er them 
thar skifty boats, is you? ” 

“ Oh no, Aunt Milly! ” said Dee reassuringly. 
“ You must have a comfortable seat in the stern 
of the naphtha launch. We will give you the 
place Miss Maria would have had could she have 
gone.” 

“ Well, Gawd save us! I ain’t nebber set foot 
on or in the ribber in all my life an’ I been born 
an’ bred on its banks, too,” and the old woman 
drew forth a big red bandanna handkerchief and 
wiped her eyes. 

As she did so she came upon the something 


162 A HOUSE PARTY 

round and hard tied up in its corner, and at the 
same time she glanced up at Mr. Tucker. He, in 
a seemingly absent-minded way, put his hand in 
his pocket and jingled his keys and coin. 

“Well, all right, Miss Maria! If you say I 
mus’ go, I reckon ’tain’t fer me to gainsay you. 
Who gonter do my wuck at home? ” 

“ There won’t be much work to do, Milly, since 
all of the young people are going away, and the 
general has planned to spend the day at the 
court-house. The lunch baskets are ready, are 
they not? ” 

“ Yassum! I been up sence sunup a-packin’ 
’em. It seemed like ol’ times to be a-packin’ all 
them victuals. I ’member what a gret han’ you 
was for pickaniggers whin you was a gal. I 
reckon it’s a-cuttin’ all them samwidges yistiddy 
dat done combusticated yo’ hip now. You better 
let me rub you befo’ I go a shopper-roonin’.” 

“ Thank you, Milly, but if you chaperone, that 
will be work enough for you for to-day. You 
had better get ready now. Tell Willie to take 
you to your cabin in the buggy and wait and 


WITH THE TUCKER TWIKS 163 

drive you back. You must hurry and not keep 
the young ladies waiting.” 

Aunt Milly waddled off, filled with impor- 
tance and pride but secretly dreading a water 
trip. Dee insisted upon massaging the poor in- 
valid, who really was suffering intensely. Dee 
was a born nurse and was never so happy as when 
she could take command in a sick room. She 
drove all of us out, insisting the patient must be 
quiet. Wink, who was really and truly a doctor 
now, was called in and readily prescribed and 
what’s more produced the medicine from a little 
kit he carried about with him. Dee rubbed and 
rubbed until it was time to start on the picnic. 
Miss Maria was so soothed that she dozed off and 
Dee tiptoed out of the room without making a 
sound. 

No doubt the poor old lady enjoyed her day 
of quiet and rest. We must have been a great 
trial to her, because we were a noisy, hoydenish 
lot. Those of us who didn’t sit up late at night 
making a racket, got up early in the morning to 
do so, and vice versa. She was so sweet and 


164 A HOUSE PARTY 

good-natured about us that she never let us feel 
we were a nuisance, but I am sure we must have 
been. 


CHAPTER XII 


THE SHOPPER-ROON 

Of course Aunt Milly kept us waiting. There 
is no telling what rite she performed in her cabin 
in preparation for the momentous occasion of 
chaperoning. We were all seated in the boats 
waiting, the lunch stowed carefully in the locker 
of the launch and the bathing suits tucked under 
the seats, when Willie came racing up in a light 
red-wheeled buggy, one side so bent down with 
Aunt Milly’s great weight that the springs were 
touching. 

“Gawd pertec’ me!” she prayed as Harvie 
and Zebedee between them handed her into the 
launch. The little craft did some perceptible 
sinking with the extra load and had to be 
lightened a bit. 

“ Sleepy, you had better get out,” teased 
Rags. 

Poor Sleepy had been having a strenuous week 
165 


166 


A HOUSE PARTY 


trying to monopolize Annie Pore. This was a 
difficult thing to do, as Annie seemed to attract 
the male sex willy nilly. She had no idea of 
flirting and never meant to hurt anyone, but 
there was something about her that appealed to 
the masculine element irresistibly. Wherever 
she went she made conquests by a certain cling- 
ing vine attitude she had towards the whole 
world. Mere man likes to be looked upon as a 
protector and Amnie’s timidity was meat and 
drink to his vanity. George Massie, alias 
Sleepy, was her slave; Harvie Price thought he 
looked upon her as a little sister, but I have never 
yet seen a big brother quite so anxious for the 
comfort of nothing but a sister; Jack Bennett 
seemed to find her very attractive and divided his 
allegiance between her and Dee; nothing but his 
loyalty to Sleepy kept Ben Raglan from enter- 
ing the lists for the favor of the little English 
maid. He occasionally teased poor Sleepy, but 
that young giant never did know what I knew: 
that Rags really cared for Annie. 

Sleepy, knowing that the launch was the safest 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 167 

place in which to embark for a picnic and under- 
standing how timid Annie was and how poor a 
swimmer, had ensconced her in that vessel in a 
protected spot, and had found a place at her feet 
where he could look up into her pretty face. 

“ Me get out? Get out yourself! ” he cried in- 
dignantly. 

“ But it is not quality they want out but quan- 
tity,” answered Rags. “ You and Aunt Milly, 
being in the same boat, can’t ride in the same 
boat.” 

Now George Massie was not really fat, but 
because of his great bulk he was usually thought 
of as being so. Certainly his bones were well 
covered but his muscles were hard as iron. What 
fat was there was well hammered down. He 
must have weighed at that time at least two hun- 
dred and twenty pounds, but then his six feet two 
inches could carry a good many pounds. He 
was cursed with money if ever a young man was. 
His father was very wealthy and George had 
never been denied a single thing in all his life. 
His principal ambition had been to make the 


168 A HOUSE PAKTY 

football team at the University and even that had 
been granted him, — not because of money but 
because of brawn. 

He was studying medicine in a desultory way, 
taking a year longer to finish his course than the 
more ambitious Wink, who was not cursed at all 
with money but had unbounded energy and am- 
bition. Sleepy’s friends, and he had many of 
those necessary things, all adored him. He was 
so honest, so straightforward, so sympathetic. 
They deplored his lack of ambition, however. I 
used to feel that Sleepy was a lesson to all of the 
young men in his set because they realized that 
after all too much money often had a softening 
effect on character. There seemed to be no es- 
pecial use for George Massie to graduate, be- 
cause after he got his diploma what difference 
would it make whether he got patients or not? 
His adoration of Annie Pore had had a good ef- 
fect on him, so Jim Hart had told me. The last 
year at the University he had done better study- 
ing than he ever had in his life, and his friends 
had hopes of his • waking up to the fact that the 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 169 

world might need him, even if he did not need the 
world’s money in doctor’s fees. 

“Yes, Sleepy! You’ll have to vamoose,” in- 
sisted Jack Bennett, trying to squeeze himself 
down between George Massie and Annie. 

“ You are as big as any two other passengers,” 
declared Rags. 

“ If that is the case, then suppose two other 
passengers take to the life-boats,” suggested 
Zebedee. “ Come on, Page, you are light and 
easy to row and there is a nice little brown boat 
waiting for us.” 

Dum and Billy Somers had already started in 
their picturesque red skiff, and Mary Flannagan 
and Shorty were well on their way in the canoe. 
They had been independent and had not had to 
wait while Aunt Milly arrayed herself in all the 
glories of a brand new purple calico and bright 
plaid he$d handkerchief. 

“All right ! ” I acquiesced to Mr. Tucker’s 
proposal. 

After we were transferred to the little brown 
boat and on our way to Croxton’s Ford, He said: 


170 


A HOUSE PAETY 


“ I am afraid I was selfish to ask you to come 
with me. I know I should not have taken you 
away from all of your young friends.” 

“ Why, Zebedee! How absurd! You are the 
youngest friend I have, much the youngest.” 

“ But you gave a very sad and unenthusiastic 
‘ all right ’ to my proposition to come by skiff. 
Now, didn’t you? ” 

“ But it wasn’t that I didn’t want to come with 
you,” I declared. 

“ Perhaps not, but merely that you didn’t 
want to leave someone else to come with me. 
Now fess up, honey! ” 

“ I have nothing to fess up about.” 

“ Well, then, why did you look so crestfallen 
when I put it up to you to leave the launch? ” 
and Zebedee dug his oars in the water with some 
viciousness. 

“ I didn’t mean to. I — I ” 

“ You what? ” 

“ I had a reason for wanting to stay in the 
launch.” 

“ Didn’t I say so? Who was the reason? ” 


WITH THE TUCKEE TWINS 171 

“ It wasn’t a who, at all — it was a which.” 

“ A which? ” he asked somewhat mystified. 

“ Yes, a which! If you must know, I wanted 
to be under the awning because of my freckled 
nose,” and I blushed until it hurt. My nose was 
a great annoyance to me. It was such a little 
nose to get so many freckles on it. The fact that 
they disappeared in the winter was but cold com- 
fort to me. 

“ But I like freckles,” he said quite solemnly, 
but his eyes were dancing with amusement. 

“ But I don’t, and it’s my nose. You are the 
only person who does like ’em.” 

“ Who has been telling you he doesn’t like 
them? ” 

“ Nobody to my face, or rather to my freckles, 
but I heard Jessie Wilcox talking to someone 
about me and she called me a speckled beauty, — 
just exactly as though I were a trout or a coach 
dog or a turkey egg or something. And I know 
after this day on the water I’ll be a sight.” 

“ Do you care what she says? ” 

“ I care what anybody says.” 


172 


A HOUSE PARTY 


“ Why, little friend, I did not dream you put 
so much value on the opinion of others, especially 
where mere personal appearance is concerned.” 
I thought I detected a note of disappointment in 
his voice. 

“ I don’t about everything, but one’s nose is 
mighty close to one, somehow.” 

“ So it is,” he laughed, “ and I am so sorry to 
have been the means of injuring that touchy 
member. I can’t help feeling kind of happy, 
though, that it was the awning you were loath to 
leave and not some one of those boys. Here’s a 
nice linen handkerchief; why don’t you tie that 
over your nose? ” 

Mr. Tucker always had the nicest linen hand- 
kerchiefs I ever saw, and he seemed to have clean, 
folded ones ready to produce for every emer- 
gency. I accepted his offer and tied it over the 
lower part of my face. 

“ Now you look like a little Turkish lady. 
Please say you are glad you came in the little 
brown boat,” and my boatman shipped his oars 
and drifted with the current. 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 173 

It was a very easy thing to say because I was 
very glad. Now that my poor little nose was 
protected, I was perfectly happy. I always en- 
joyed being with Zebedee. We never talked out 
and we seldom had a disagreement; not that we 
agreed on every subject by any means, but we 
could disagree without having a disagreement. 
We talked about everything under the sun from 
Shakespeare to the musical glasses. I couldn’t 
help comparing this boat ride to the one I had 
been overpersuaded to take with Wink only a 
few days before. We had started out with the 
best of intentions on my part to avoid all shoals 
in conversation, but before we had been out ten 
minutes Wink was gnawing his little moustache 
in fury and I was wishing I had stayed on shore/ 
A row with Wink was sure to end in a row (pro- 
nounced rou) . 

The launch arrived at Croxton’s Ford long be- 
fore we did, but we came as fast as the current 
allowed, having drifted a good part of the way. 
The party had landed and had begun to make the 
camp for the day. It was a wonderful spot 


174 


A HOUSE PAETY 


chosen for the picnic. A large creek, flowing 
into the river, broadened out almost into a lake, 
and in the mouth of this creek were innumerable 
small islands. Some of them had large trees 
growing on them, lovely sandy beaches and strips 
of verdure; others were too young to have trees 
but were covered with grass. The camp was 
pitched on the largest island, right at the mouth 
of the creek that afforded a landing for the 
launch. There was a famous spring on this is- 
land that was thought by the county people to 
have some great curative power. What it cured 
you of I don’t know, but it tasted too good to be 
much good as a medicine, I imagine. 

Aunt Millv, who had proven herself to be an 
ideal chaperone, having slept during the entire 
journey, was now ensconced under a water oak 
on a warm sand bank with nothing to do but en- 
joy herself. This she did immediately by falling 
asleep again. 

“ Whin I ain’t a-wuckin’, I’s a-sleepin’,” she 
droned as slumber enfolded her. 

Of course the camp fire must be made and po- 


WITH THE TUCKER TWIKS 175 

tatoes and com put to roast and the coffee-pot 
filled with the sparkling spring water. The trip 
down had made everybody hungry, whether ac- 
complished without exertion as by those in the 
launch; or with the sweat of the brow as by Mary 
and Shorty in the canoe, or Dum and Billy Som- 
ers in the red skiff; or with just enough work to 
keep the boat in the current which was Zebedee’s 
and my method of locomotion : one and all were 
hungry. 

“ While dinner is cooking, let’s have a swim,” 
suggested Harvie. “ You girls take this side of 
the island for a dressing-room and we’ll take the 
other. Here are some low willows that make 
splendid walls.” 

Bathing suits were produced and while our 
chaperone slumbered and slept, we got into them 
and then into the water. Such water! It was 
clear and soft, so much more so than the water 
of the big river. The bottom was clean sand 
with no disturbing rocks and snags. The trees 
shaded the place chosen for our swim where the 
sloping beach made it safe for the timid close to 


176 


A HOUSE PAETY 


shore, but ten yards of perseverance plunged the 
bold swimmer into really deep water. 

The shouts of joy would have waked the dead 
had there been any on the island, but nothing 
waked the sleeping Aunt Milly. She had bur- 
rowed down in the unresisting sand almost as 
deep as some meteoric stone might have done. 
There she lay, having the rest that she deserved 
after the “ mos’ a hun’erd years er cookin’ ” that 
she declared she had served at Maxton. 

“This is my island!” cried Dum, swimming 
over to a beautiful spot about twenty yards from 
camp. She clambered out on the strip of sand 
and stood with arms outstretched looking very 
handsome, her lithe young figure drawn up to 
its full height. “ I am monarch of all I survey! 
I’m queen of this land! ” 

“ Let me come help you rule,” pleaded Billy 
Somers, who had followed her. 

“ I don’t need a prime minister just now, 
thank you, but you might get in the waiting list.” 

“ Thanks awfully! ” and the young Kentuck- 
ian threw himself on the warm sand at her feet. 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 177 

What nice fellows those Kentuckians were, any- 
how! They were full of life and fun, clean 
minded, clear thinking, well-mannered boys. 
Dum and Billy were friends from the moment 
they met and were usually the ringleaders in 
any larks that were started on the house-party. 
The strange thing about the friendship was that 
they looked alike, so very much alike that I be- 
lieve some pioneer ancestor of Billy’s must have 
come from the Tucker stock. 

Billy’s hair had a bit more red in it than 
Dum’s, not much, just enough to make his hair in 
the shade about the color Dum’s was in the sun. 
Their foreheads were identical and their chins 
had the same tendency to get square when an 
argument was under way. They really looked 
quite as much alike as the twins themselves did. 
Zebedee declared that Billy made him feel a 
hundred years old because he looked so like his 
son, if he had ever had one. Billy was about 
three years older than the twins, and when we 
consider that the twins were born when their 
father was only twenty, no wonder the possibility 


178 


A HOUSE PAETY 


of a son at seventeen made poor Mr. Tucker 
blue. 

“ This is our island and we are going to permit 
no aliens to land here,” called Dum as a chal- 
lenge to all of us. “ I am Queen Dum and Billy 
is General Billdad. We have held counsel and 
herewith make the proclamation that there is to 
be no immigration to this kingdom.” 

It took only a moment for us to answer the 
challenge. Dee headed the opposing forces, 
making a long dive that brought her up almost 
on the beach of the little kingdom. Dum was 
ready to push her back in the water and kerflop ! 
she went before Zebedee could come to her aid. 
Then ensued such a battle as had not been 
fought in the United States since Custer’s last 
rally. 

Of course Dum and Billy had the advantage 
of position, but we so far outnumbered them that 
it took all of their strength to keep us from land- 
ing. 

“ Mary ! Mary ! You and Shorty come be our 
allies ! ” called Queen Dum to the couple who 



“THIS IS OUR ISLAND AND WE ARE GOING 
TO PERMIT NO ALIENS TO LAND HERE.” 
Pagie 178. 


- 







WITH THE TUCKER TWIKS 179 

had gone to housekeeping on a small island near 
her own. Mary slid into the water like a turtle 
and Shorty followed. They landed from the 
rear and now the battle raged fiercely. 

I know I got pitched back into the water at 
least a dozen times. Having learned to swim 
only the summer before at Willoughby, I was 
not a past master in the art, but I could keep 
above water indefinitely, thanks to Zebedee, my 
instructor, who had made floating the first req- 
uisite. 

The odds were in our favor but the vantage 
they had in position was well-nigh discouraging 
us, when Zebedee and Wink made a flank move- 
ment and landed on the other side of the island, * 
immediately pushing over the opposing forces 
into the foaming torrent and then pulling all of 
us onto dry land. 

“Victory! Victory !” we shouted; and then 
for the first time since the battle began to rage 
we remembered our chaperone. She had awak- 
ened and dug herself out of her warm sand nest. 
What were her charges up to? It never entered 


180 


A HOUSE PAETY 


the old woman’s head that we were playing a 
game, and I fancy we looked in dead earnest. 

When she had dozed off after landing we were 
all of us clothed and in our right minds, and 
suddenly she awoke to find us anything but 
clothed, according to her strict ideas of propriety 
among the quality, never having seen girls in 
bathing suits ; and not only were we in disgrace- 
ful dishabille, but we were engaged in a distress- 
ing brawl. 

“My Gawd! My Gawd! ” she wailed. “Here 
I been a-slumberin’ an’ sleepin’ an’ Miss Maria 
done tol’ me to shopper-roon. I trus’ed de 
white folks an’ look at ’em! ” She covered her 
face with her hands and wept aloud. 

I fancy we were something to look at. Bath- 
ing caps were off and hair wet and tangled 
streaming down our backs. Dee had lost a 
stocking in the tussle and Rags had been bereft 
of more than half of his shirt, so that his white 
back gleamed forth in a most immodest abandon. 
Shorty had tapped Harvie on the nose and that 
scion of a noble race was bleeding like a stuck 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 181 

pig. The gore added color to the scene, and had 
not Aunt Milly already been certain that this 
was a real war we were raging, the blood of her 
young master would have convinced her. 

“ Hi, you! You! ” she called. “ Quit dat! ” 
The battle being won, we had stopped for re- 
pairs but there were still here and there some fit- 
ful hostilities. For instance: Shorty had deter- 
mined that Harvie needed some cold water on 
his bleeding nose and was rolling him into the 
creek. Both of them were shouting and pom- 
melling each other as they rolled. 

As they approached the large island where our 
camp was pitched, Aunt Milly became very much 
excited. Who were these vile wretches who had 
accepted the hospitality of the Prices and then 
turned against them, and while she, the natural 
protector of the young master, was sleeping, had 
well-nigh stripped him of his clothes and then 
bloodied him all over with his own blue blood, 
which was certainly flowing very redly? 

“ Hi, you! You little low flung, no ’count, 
bench-legged trash! What you a-doin’ ter Mr. 


182 A HOUSE PARTY 

Harbie? ” she called to the all-unconscious 
Shorty, who was having the time of his life as 
he and his friend wallowed in the water, wres-. 
tling as they swam. 

But Aunt Milly saw no joke in such doings. 
She looked around for something to use as a 
weapon and spied the camp fire where the corn 
and potatoes were being prepared to fulfill their 
mission. They were done to a turn by that time 
and the fire had died down to a bed of red embers. 
The old woman grabbed from the ashes a great 
yam and with an aim that astonished one, she 
threw it and hit Shorty a sounding whack on his 
back. 

“ Wow! ” yelled that young warrior. 

“ You’d better wow! An’ don’ you lan’ here; 
you go back ter dem Injuns whar you come 
wid.” 

“Why, Aunt Milly! What on earth?” 
gasped Harvie as he saw the old woman stooping 
for more ammunition. 

“ Yo’ ol’ Milly gwine he’p you, dat’s what!” 
She aimed another at the astonished Shorty, but 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 183 

that young man turned himself into a submarine 
and disappeared. 

Harvie clambered out of the water spluttering 
and laughing. His nose had stopped bleeding 
now and the water had washed off all traces of 
the gory disaster. He caught the rampant Milly 
by the arm: 

“Aunt Milly, it’s all a joke, a game! Nobody 
was abusing me. Don’t throw away the pota- 
toes, we are so hungry.” 

“ Lawsamussy, chile! You can’t fool this ol’ 
nigger. I’s seen folks a-playin’ an’ I’s a-seen 
folks a-fightin’, an’ if’n that there warn’t a battle 
royal, I neber seed one.” 

By this time all of us were headed for camp. 
As we came ashore her expression was still a bel- 
ligerent one, and she had a hot potato which she 
tossed from hand to hand ready for an emer- 
gency. 

It took all the tact the Tuckers could muster 
among them to convince Aunt Milly that we had 
not been fighting, and even after she seemed to 
be convinced, she growled a bit when Shorty ap- 


184 


A HOUSE PAETY 


peared all dressed and spruce, with his hair 
plastered down tight and his arm linked in Har- 
vie’s. She had the fidelity of some old dog for 
its master and it would take some time to erase 
from her mind and heart that terrible scene of 
Mr. Harbie being beaten and blooded and 
pitched into the water. 

We led her back to her seat in the sand and 
brought her dinner to her. We would not let 
her help cook or serve, but treated her like a real 
chaperone and waited on her right royally. She 
rolled her eyes a bit when to Shorty was rele- 
gated the task of taking her a cup of coffee. He 
pretended to be very much frightened and trem- 
bled violently as he handed her the brimming 
cup. 

“Aunt Milly, how did you learn how to throw 
so well? You hit me with that potato just as 
though you belonged to a baseball nine.” 

“ I been a-practicin’ all my life a-throwin’ at 
rats,” she growled. 

This brought down the house. 


CHAPTER XIII 


TANGLEFOOT 

A sufficient time having elapsed since din- 
ner, we decided to go in swimming again ; at least 
the Tuckers decided to and all of us followed suit 
(bathing suit!). Aunt Milly was becoming ac- 
customed to the ways of her charges and gave her 
gracious consent when we humbly asked it. She 
even stopped rolling her eyes at Shorty when she 
saw that Harvie was not injured, after all, and 
that he himself bore no malice towards his friend. 

Mary, too, had something to do with mollify- 
ing the old woman. She went and sat on the 
sand bank by her side and explained to her how 
the battle royal started and what fun it had been. 
Of course ever since the circus, Mary had been a 
great favorite with all the servants. They looked 
upon her as a real celebrity. Mary had so many 

stunts and was always so willing to amuse per- 
185 


186 


A HOUSE PARTY 


sons that she was constantly being called on to do 
her dog fight or get off a feat of ventriloquism or 
something else. 

“ Aunt Milly, if you forgive poor Mr. Haw- 
kins for bloodying up Mr. Harvie, I’ll go like a 
little pig caught under the gate for you.” 

“ Lawsamussy, chil’, kin you do that? ” 

“ Sure! Will you forgive him if I do it? ” 

“ Lemme hear you do it fust an’ I’ll see,” said 
Aunt Milly with a sly look. She was getting too 
much capital out of the grudge she had against 
Shorty to give it up too readily. 

So Mary went through all the agony of a little 
pig caught under the gate and even improved 
upon it to the extent of introducing another char- 
acter into the act: she went like two pigs caught 
under the gate. 

Aunt Milly sat in her sand hole entranced. 

“Well, bless Bob! If it ain’t it to the life! 
How you do it, honey? ” So Mary had to do it 
once more and then Aunt Milly promised to for- 
give and forget. 

“ Come on and help clear up the remains of the 


WITH THE TUCKEB TWINS 187 

feast, Mary/’ insisted Dum, who was ever deter- 
mined that there should be no shirkers. 

“ I’m busy mollifying,” declared Mary. “ My 
talents lie more in this direction,” and she could 
not help mimicking Jessie Wilcox just enough to 
give Dum the dry grins. Jessie had not helped 
at all about luncheon but had insisted that Aunt 
Milly should be made to do whatever we had the 
hardihood to suggest that she might do. Aunt 
Milly, however, having been told that she was to 
do no “ wuck,” did none, and presented a duck 
back to all insinuations from the haughty Jessie. 

“ I don’t care where your talents lie,” insisted 
Dum, “ you are going to come help clear these 
dishes off the cloth so I can fold it up.” 

Mary began to sing to a catchy tune this mu- 
sic-hall ballad: 

“I want to be a actress, a actress, a actress, 

I tell you I won’t live and die a common serving gal. 

I feel I’ve got the natur’ 

To act in a the-a-ter, 

I’m just the kind of stuff to make a star profession-a-1-1. ” 

“ Well, now ain’t she cute? ” and Aunt Milly 
shook her fat sides with laughter. “ She ain’t 


183 


A HOUSE PAETY 


ter say purty but she is sho’ got a way wid her. 
She ain’t so handsome as some but she gonter 
keep her takin’ ways til’ Kingdom Come, whilst 
some folks what ain’t nothin’ but purty won’ hab 
nothin’ lef’ a tall whin the las’ trump soun’s. I 
ain’t a got no ’ jections ter purty folks, — now that 
there little Miss Annie Po’ is sho’ sweet lookin’ 
an’ sweet tas’in’, too, but she is wuth somethin’ 
sides. But some ain’t.” A glance of her rolling 
eyes in the direction of Jessie gave us to under- 
stand who “ some ” meant. 

Jessie and Wink were having a most desperate 
flirtation. He had not left her side a moment 
during the whole day. Jessie glanced occasion- 
ally in my direction with a little exultant toss of 
her head as much as to say: “ See, miss, I’ve got 
your beau!” She was more than welcome to 
him, but I didn’t think it kind to lessen her de- 
light in her conquest, so I did my best to make 
her happy by sighing deeply every time I caught 
her looking at me. 

The pleasure of going in swimming is going in 
again, so as I said before, as soon as a reasonable 


WITH THE TUCKEB TWINS 1S9 

time had elapsed since our very filling dinner we 
again retired to our several tree-formed bath- 
houses and donned our suits for a farewell 
dip. 

“ No more fights now! ” commanded Zebedec 
sternly, just as though he had not been among 
the mighty warriors of the last fray. 

Tweedles promptly caught him and gave him 
a good ducking until he yelled for mercy and 
help from Aunt Milly, but that model chaperone 
had gone off to sleep again and was deaf to his 
cries. 

“ That’s what you get for being Mr. Tucker- 
ish,” declared Dum. 

Jessie Wilcox was a good swimmer but was 
determined not to get her hair wet, so had* not 
entered very largely into our water sports. 
Tweedles and Mary and I had lost our bathing 
caps in the great naval battle, and since our heads 
were already wet, we decided to get them wetter 
and let our hair dry on the trip home. As for 
Annie, getting her feet wet was about all she 
could make up her mind to do, although her coils 


190 


A HOUSE PARTY 


of honei^-colored hair got a little damp. She 
would take shuddering steps into the water and 
when she got about knee-deep would lie down 
and go through the motions of swimming with 
one foot on the bottom. She had really learned 
to keep up on top of the water at Willoughby the 
summer before, but now had lost all confidence 
in herself and was content just to paddle around 
in the shallows. 

From one side of our large island there 
stretched a long narrow sand bar. The water 
just trickled through there, while the great vol- 
ume of the creek flowed on the other side where 
we were swimming. There were many shallow 
spots where Annie could be perfectly safe, but 
she decided to walk out on the sand bar and there 
let down her hair and dry it in the sun. Her 
cavaliers who seldom left her alone for a moment 
happened to be engaged in some swimming 
stunts just then, so unattended she crossed the 
bar and, seating herself on the end of the neck of 
sand, she let down her beautiful hair and spread 
it out in the sun. 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 191 

“Only look at Annie! Isn’t she lovely?” 
whispered Dum to me. “ She looks like a mer- 
maid or a Rhine maiden.” 

“ Please sing something, Annie! ” I called. 

“ What shall I sing? ” laughed Annie, comb- 
ing her hair with one of her side-combs and peep- 
ing at me through its golden glory. 

“Anything, so it has water in it! ” 

Annie’s voice had grown in richness and vol- 
ume since the days at Gresham, although she had 
had no lessons since that time. She had taken 
advantage of the teaching she had received from 
Miss Cox and kept up her practicing by herself 
as best she could. Of course she should have 
been under some good master, and all of us felt 
indignant with Mr. Pore that he did not realize 
this and make some arrangement for his daugh- 
ter. The outlay of money necessary for her mu- 
sical education would have been great, but the 
returns would surely have been fourfold. 
Everyone who heard Annie sing could not but 
admire her voice. Even Jessie Wilcox praised 
it, although that young lady was not inclined to 


192 A HOUSE PAETY 

think anybody but herself worthy of compli- 
ments. 

The lovely thing about Annie was she was al- 
ways ready to be obliging, and if her singing 
gave any pleasure, she was perfectly willing to 
contribute it to the general welfare. She never 
said she didn’t have her music and could not sing 
without notes; she never gave the excuse of not 
being able to sing without accompaniment. 
When Annie sang, her shyness left her. She 
seemed to forget herself and lose all self-con- 
sciousness. As her clear soprano notes arose on 
the air, the noisy bathers quieted down and 
everyone listened. 

“On the banks of Allan Water 
When the sweet spring-time did fall, 

Was the miller’s lovely daughter, 

Fairest of them all. 

For his bride a soldier sought her, 

And a winning tongue had he, 

On the banks of Allan Water, 

None so gay as she. 

On the banks of Allan Water 
When brown autumn spreads his store, 

There I saw the miller’s daughter, 

But she smiled no more. 


WITH THE TUCKEB TWINS 


193 


For the summer grief had brought her, 

And the soldier false was he, 

On the banks of Allan Water, 

None so sad as she. 

On the banks of Allan Water, 

When the winter’s snow fell fast, 

Still was seen the miller’s daughter, 

Chilling blew the blast. 

But the miller’s lovely daughter, 

Both from cold and care was free ; 

On the banks of Allan Water, 

There a corse lay she.’ ’ 

“ Bully!” exclaimed the audience. 

“ I’d like to meet that soldier,” muttered 
Sleepy. 

“ Please sing some more,” begged Rags. 

And so she sang again. Now she stood up, 
took a few steps, and faced us as we paddled 
around. 

“ Look what a big hole Annie made in the 
sand, almost as big as Aunt Milly’s,” whispered 
Dee to me. 

“ Yes, the sand must be awfully soft. I’m 
glad it’s not quicksand, though. That’s so dan- 
gerous.” But what I knew about the dangers of 
quicksand I kept to myself, as Annie had begun: 


194 


A HOUSE PAKTY 


“To sea, to sea! The calm is o’er; 

The wanton water leaps in sport, 

And rattles down the pebbly shore ; 

The dolphin wheels, the sea-cow’s snort, 

And unseen mermaids’ pearly song 

Comes bubbling up the weeds among ” 

And just then a strange thing happened: 
Annie began to sink. The little sand island she 
had chosen as a place of refuge where she might 
dry her hair was evidently only an island in the 
making, and the sand had not packed down. It 
was quicksand, but not so quick as it might have 
been, as she had been on it some minutes before it 
began to give way under her weight. She looked 
frightened and tried to pull her one foot up, but 
it stuck. The last lines of her song were in a fair 
way to be enacted before our very eyes if haste 
was not made. 

Annie gave a scream and made desperate 
struggles to extricate herself. The swimmers 
all started to her rescue, George Massie leading 
the way, shooting through the mater like a shark. 

I clutched Zebedee as he went by me. “ Get 
the little brown boat and I’ll help! The sand 
may be dangerous all around there.” 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 195 

He was a quick thinker and turned without a 
word, landed on the big island and I followed. 
We launched the little brown boat that we had 
shoved up among the weeds and in a very short 
time were floating out into deep water. With a 
few strong strokes of the oars we had arrived at 
the spot where we were in truth much needed. 

Sleepy had grasped Annie, who was now en- 
gulfed up to her knees. Of course he was about 
the worst person among us to have got first to 
her rescue because of his great weight. He gave 
a tremendous pull, grasping Annie around her 
waist. She came out of the sand making a noise 
like a whole drove of cattle lifting their hoofs out 
of the mud. Annie was perfectly limp with 
fright. She clung to George Massie like some 
little panic-stricken child. 

The frantic Rags reached the sand bar imme- 
diately behind Sleepy, and Harvie swam him a 
close second. The water was quite deep within a 
few feet of the fatal spot that the innocent Annie 
had chosen as the best place to dry her hair. The 
beach of quicksand shelved suddenly into swim- 


196 


A HOUSE PARTY 


ming depth. As Harvie and Rags stepped from 
this swimming hole into shallow water they real- 
ized that they, too, had hurled themselves into 
danger. They stuck fast. 

Annie clung desperately to George. Her 
eyes were closed and she was so pale I thought 
she must have fainted. It was a few moments 
before the rest of the party realized that the three 
youths were being slowly sucked down. They 
knew it, however, from the moment they touched 
the bar. 

“ Throw Annie out into the water! ” said Har- 
vie hoarsely. Annie had not fainted as I had 
thought, for at these words she clung so desper- 
ately to poor Sleepy that he could not loose her 
hands. 

Harvie reached over and unclasped them, 
holding them tightly until Sleepy could raise her 
up farther in his arms to throw her. 

“Float, Annie! You can float ! ” shouted 
Dee. “ Do as I tell you! ” 

Annie, ever inclined to obedience, spread her 
arms out as she struck the water and floated off 


WITH THE TUCKER TWIKS 197 

as neatly as some well-built yacht launched for 
the first time. Of course the others grabbed her 
as soon as she got to them. 

By* this time Zebedee and I had the little 
brown boat to the rescue. We came alongside 
the poor stick-in-the-muds. 

“Take Sleepy first!” cried the other two. 
“ He’s in worse than we are.” 

Taking Sleepy first was no joke. He had 
sunk at least a foot and a half. Zebedee tugged 
at him and Sleepy tugged at himself. The little 
boat almost capsized and still the young giant 
could not pull his feet out of the treacherous 
mire. 

“You are not in far, Rags; come on and 
help trim the boat,” I insisted, paddling the 
stern around in reach of Rags. He caught 
hold and with a quick spring was in the 
boat. 

“ Now, Harvie! ” I commanded. “ We can’t 
get Sleepy unless you come help.” I knew per- 
fectly well that Harvie had a notion he must not 
get in the boat until his friend was saved. In 


198 


A HOUSE PAKTY 


the meantime, Zebedee was struggling to raise 
Sleepy and the boat was in sad need of ballast. 
Harvie did as I bade him and with a mighty ef- 
fort extricated himself and landed in the boat. 
The legs of both the boys were covered with mire 
up to their knees. 

All the time we were doing this, the rest of the 
party was not idle. Of course some of them had 
to look after the frightened Annie. Dum and 
Billy Somers had struck out immediately for the 
red boat which was beached on the far side of the 
island, realizing as they soon did that the only 
way to get the boys out of the quicksand was by 
boat. Mary and Shorty also made for the canoe, 
thinking it might be needed, too. 

Glad we were when the red boat came along- 
side of ours and we could lash them together to 
make more purchase for Sleepy. The little 
brown boat did not have weight enough to do the 
job alone. And now with a long pull and a 
strong pull and a pull all together, we at last got 
him out. 

If when Annie got her feet out of the sand she 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 199 

made a noise like a drove of cattle lifting their 
hoofs out of the mud, you can fancy what the 
noise was when Sleepy came out. It was like a 
great ground swell, and so much water had that 
young giant displaced, when he removed his bulk 
I am sure the depth of the creek was perceptibly 
lowered. 

Now it was all over we could giggle, which 
Dum and I did until Zebedee got really outdone 
with us and threatened to box us both. It had 
been a close shave and he felt it was not a time 
for giggling, but Dum and I were no respecters 
of time or place. When the giggles struck us, 
giggle we must. 

“ If it had not been for your quickness, Page, 
it might have been a very serious tragedy,” he 
said solemnly. “ I never thought of the boats 
but was going to swim to Annie’s assist- 
ance.” 

“ I have seen this quicksand before. I almost 
lost one of my dogs several years ago. He 
started out in the creek to get a stick I had 
thrown for him and as soon as he touched the 


200 A HOUSE PABTY 

sand he began to sink. I never heard such cries 

as he gave trying to pull his feet out. I got two 

fence-rails and crawled out to him and pulled 

him in. Father nearly had a fit when I told him 

about it. He sent men down and had the creek 

dredged.” 

“ I think we should put a sign up here,” said 
Harvie, and a few days later he did paint “ Dan- 
ger ” on a sign and came back to Croxton’s Ford 
and planted it at the fatal spot. 

It had been a very trying experience, but 
young people don’t brood over things that might 
have been serious. That is something left to the 
so-called philosophy of old age. By the time we 
were in dry clothes and on our way home, the 
fact that some of our party had been in a fair way 
to losing their lives seemed something to be joked 
about. 

Of course poor Sleepy came in for his share, 
but much he cared. He stretched himself at 
Annie’s feet, and possessing himself of a little 
corner of her sweater, which he clutched tightly 
in his great hand just as a little baby might cling 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 201 

to its mother’s dress, he dropped off into a sleep 
of exhaustion. He looked very peaceful and 
happy as he lay there and Annie looked down on 
his handsome head with affection and admiration 
in her blue eyes. 

“ I know one thing,” announced Rags; “ I’ll 
never see sticky fly-paper again without thinking 
of this day. I felt exactly like a poor fly stuck 
fast in tanglefoot. I am sure my legs are a foot 
longer than they were when I left Maxton this 
morning.” As Ben Raglan’s legs were abnor- 
mally long, we all devoutly hoped that the 
stretching was not permanent. Proportioned 
somewhat like a clothes-pin, he could not stand 
much lengthening of limb. 

“ Shorty, it’s too bad you weren’t first aid man 
this time,” teased Harvie. “ It might have made 

a man of you. All you need is a good stretch- 

• „ >> 
mg. 

“ Wait until I get you where Aunt Milly can’t 
help you and I’ll give you the pounding you 
need,” answered the boy, as he paddled the canoe 
in the w^ake of the launch. 


202 


A HOUSE PAKTY 


Aunt Milly was comfortably ensconced in the 
seat of honor, sleeping the sleep of the just and 
generous chaperone. 


CHAPTER XIV 


A YOUNGER SON 

We found Miss Maria much improved but still 
bed-ridden. She said Wink’s medicine was the 
most efficacious she had ever had, as it had given 
her a day of rest free from pain. I fancy the 
quiet had done her as much good as the medicine. 
She regretted to report that Mr. Pore had tele- 
phoned a peremptory message to the effect that 
Annie should come home the first thing in the 
morning and bring her clothes. 

“ Now isn’t that the limit? ” stormed Dum. 
“ What on earth can he want? We haven’t but 
three more days here and it seems to me he 

might ” But Annie looked so pained that 

Dum didn’t say what he might do. 

“ He needs me, I fancy,” said Annie sadly. 

“ So do we need you ! And how about Sleepy 
203 


204 


A HOUSE PAETY 


and Harvie and Rags? ” But Annie didn’t know 
how about them, so she only blushed. 

“ Maybe you can come back,” I suggested. 

“ No, I fancy not, or why should he say I must 
bring my clothes? ” 

All of us were at a loss to fathom the behavior 
of Mr. Pore, but we were too tired to discuss it 
farther. We were thankful for the time we had 
been able to wrest Annie from his selfish de- 
mands. I' was sorry, indeed, that Zebedee had 
attended to his old freight for him. I heartily 
agreed with Dum’s sentiments which she mut- 
tered under her breath: 

“Pig!” 

“ Anyhow, we are going down with you,” de- 
clared Mary. 

“ But I must go before breakfast,” said Annie. 

“ Well, we can travel on an empty stomach 
quite as well as you can and a great deal weller,” 
insisted Dum, and Dee and Mary and I agreed. 

“ Please don’t awaken me,” said Jessie as she 
twisted her hair into the patent curlers that she 
managed so well nobody but a girl could have 


WITH THE TUCKEB TWINS 205 

told that her curls were not natural. “ I cer- 
tainly want to sleep in the morning. Dr. White 
begged me to go rowing with him before break- 
fast, but I can’t bear to get up so early in the 
morning. It seemed to distress him terribly but 
then he is such a flirt one can never tell.” All 
this with many glances in my direction. 

We had gathered in the room occupied by 
Tweedles and Jessie for a little chat before turn- 
ing in for the night. 

“How cr-u-le!” exclaimed Mary. “What 
makes you think he is such a flirt? ” 

“Ah, that would be telling! ” and Jessie began 
dabbing on the cold cream. 

It is strange how indifferent some girls are to 
what other girls think of them. Jessie Wilcox, 
the most careful person in the world to look well 
when any males were around, did not mind in the 
least letting us see her with her hair twisted up 
in little wads and clasped with innumerable ar- 
rangements made of wire covered with leather. 
The things looked like huge ticks sticking out 
from her head, not such a shapely head, either. 


206 A HOUSE PAETY 

now that one saw it with the hair drawn back so 
tightly. Cold cream may be a future beautifier 
but certainly not a present one. She laid it on 
in generous hunks and then massaged herself, 
contorting her countenance in a most disconcert- 
ing manner. 

“ I don't think Wink is a flirt at all,” said Dee 
stoutly. “ He is a very good friend of mine and 
I reckon I know him about as well as anybody in 
the world. Of course he will flirt if it is up to 
him, but that is not making him a flirt.” 

“Ah, indeed! ” and Jessie began rubbing cocoa 
butter on her neck. “ Perhaps you don’t know 
the flirtatious side of him.” 

“ Thank goodness, I don’t. He and I talk 
sense to each other,” and Dee scornfully sniffed 
the air. She and Dum hated the odor of cocoa 
butter, declaring it made their room smell like an 
apothecary’s shop. 

“ Why don’t you and Dum come in our room 
for to-night?” I suggested, scenting mischief as 
well as cocoa butter in the air, since the usually 
tactful Dee was on the war-path. “ You will be 


WITH THE TUCKEE TWINS 207 

sure to disturb Jessie in the morning if you sleep 
in here. Come on! I’ll sleep three in the bed 
with you and get in the middle at that,” and so 
they came, expressing themselves privately as 
glad to get away from their roommate, who did 
smell so of cocoa butter and also looked so hide- 
ous with her hair done up in those tick-like ar- 
rangements and her face shiny with grease. 

“ Cat! What does she mean by calling Wink 
a flirt?” raged Dee, who was surely a loyal 
friend. 

“ Maybe he is one,” suggested Dum. 

“ Virginia Tucker, I am tired unto death but 
Til challenge you to a boxing match if you say 
that again.” 

“ You are no more tired than I am and I’ll say 
it again!” maintained Dum. “All I said was: 
‘ Maybe he is,’ and maybe he is ! ” No one of the 
name of Tucker ever took a dare, and the twins 
crawled out of the great bed where I had taken 
my place in the middle. 

“Girls! Girls! You are so silly,” I cried 
wearily. “ You haven’t your boxing gloves and 


208 


A HOUSE PAETY 


you know you might beat each other up with your 
bare fists. This is no fighting matter, Dee, at 
least nothing to fight Dum about. Go fight 
Jessie Wilcox! She is the one who has the proof 
of Wink’s ways.” 

We were relieved that my reasoning powers 
quelled the disturbance. Tweedles got back into 
bed. The twins ve^ rarely resorted to trial by 
combat now. It had been their childish method 
of settling difficulties, as their father had brought 
them up like boys whose code of. honor is to stop 
fussing and fight it out. 

“ I can’t see why you think it is such an awful 
thing to call Wink a flirt,” I said, when all dan- 
ger of a battle had subsided. “ You certainly 
flirt sometimes yourself.” 

“ When? ” indignantly. 

“ When you sell coffins to healthy young 
farmers,” I asserted. 

No more from Dee that night. 

We were up early the next morning to escort 
Annie home, so early that no one was stirring, 
not even the servants. It seemed ridiculous for 


WITH THE TUCKEK TWINS 209 

her to go so early, but the message from her 
father was one not to be lightly ignored. She 
had told Miss Maria and the general good-by the 
night before and Harvie was to drive her home, 
but when we crept downstairs there was no Har- 
vie to be found; so we made our way out to the 
stable where Mary and I hitched up. As we 
drove off, all five of us crowded into a one-seated 
buggy, we beheld a very sleepy Harvie waving 
frantically from the boys’ wing and vainly en- 
treating us to wait; but we weren’t waiting for 
sleepy-heads that morning, and drove pitilessly 
away. 

There was an air of bustling in the store when 
we piled out of our small buggy. Mr. Pore was 
in his shirt sleeves, his glasses set at a rakish angle 
on his aristocratic nose and an unaccustomed 
flush on his usually pale countenance. He was 
busy pulling things off of the shelves and piling 
them up on the counters. The clerk (he called 
him a “ dark,” of course, after the manner of 
Englishmen), was just as busy. 

To my amazement I heard Mr. Pore say to a 


210 


A HOUSE PAETY 


little boy who had been sent to the store on a 
hurry call for matches: “ Haven’t time to wait on 
you; go over to Blinker’s.” 

What did this mean? Actually sending cus- 
tomers to the rival store ! 

“ Father! ” exclaimed Annie, as Mr. Pore gave 
her his usual pecky kiss. “ I didn’t know you 
were going to take stock to-day.” 

“ Neither did I, my dear.” His tone was a bit 
softer than I had ever heard it. And “ my 
dear ” ! I had never heard him call Annie that 
before. 

“ What is it, Father? ” 

“ I have news from England.” 

“ Not bad news, I hope! ” 

“ Well, yes! I might call it bad news.” 

“ Oh, Father, I am so sorry! ” 

“Ahem! My brother, the late baronet, is — 
er — no more.” 

“ You mean Uncle Isaac is dead? ” 

“Yes!” 

“ What was the matter? When did you 
hear?” 


WITH THE TUCKER TWIKS 211 

“ A cablegram states he was killed in a recent 
battle,” and Mr. Pore went on making neat piles 
on the counter with cans of salmon. I wanted 
to shake him for more news that I felt sure he 
had. 

Annie took off her hat and tied on an apron 
ready to help in the arduous task of taking stock. 
Tweedles and Mary and I stood in the doorway 
as dumb as fish. Why should a man whose 
brother had recently died in England feel a ne- 
cessity of taking stock in a country store? It 
was too much for us. Suddenly it flashed 
through my brain that maybe Mr. Pore was go- 
ing to England. His brother, Sir Isaac Pore, 
had a son, so Annie had told me, who was, of 
course, in line for the title. 

Mr. Pore finished with the salmon and then 
spoke with his usual pomposity: “ The message 
also states that my brother’s only son has met 
with an untimely death in the Dardanelles.” 

Annie dropped a box of soap and stood look- 
ing with big eyes at her father. 

“ I find it necessary that we go to England, 


212 A HOUSE PAETY 

and before we go, I deem it advisable to make an 

inventory of our goods and chattels.” 

“ Go to England! When? ” gasped Annie. 

“ I fancy we can arrange to be off in about a 
week.” 

This was news that touched all of us. Annie 
going to England! We might never see her 
again, and her dried-up old father was standing 
there announcing this fact with as much compo- 
sure as though he had decided to move his store 
across the road or do something else equally ordi- 
nary. 

“ You see,” he continued with his grandilo- 
quent manner, “ the demise of my brother and 
his son, who is unmarried, advance me to the bar- 
onetcy, and ” 

“ Then you are Sir Arthur Ponsonby Pore! ” 
blurted out Bum. 

“Exactly!” he announced calmly, as though 
he had been inheriting titles all his life. 

“ Is Annie Lady Anna then? ” asked Mary. 

“ No, she is still Miss Pore. Only a son in- 
herits a title from a baronet,” he said with a trace 


WITH THE TUOKER TWINS 213 

of bitterness. I remembered what Annie had 
told me of her brother’s death and her father’s 
resentment of her being a girl. 

“ Well, she would make a lovely Lady Annie 
all the same,” said Dee. “ I bet everybody 
in England will just about go crazy about 
her.” 

“Ah, indeed! ” was his supercilious remark to 
this effusion. 

“We are going to come down and help you, 
Annie,” I whispered. “ I know there are lots of 
things we can do. You will need help about 
your clothes. I can’t sew, but I can count 
clothes-pins and chewing-gum while you sew. 
Don’t you want us to help, Mr. Pore? ” 

That gentleman was as usual quite dumb- 
founded by being treated like an ordinary human 
being, and with some hemming and hawing he 
finally acknowledged that our assistance would 
be acceptable. His idea was to sell his business 
and stock to the highest bidder. 

Great was the consternation and surprise at 
Maxton when we announced the choice bit of 


214 


A HOUSE PAETY 


news that we had picked up that morning before 
breakfast. Sleepy looked as though he might 
have apoplexy, his face got so red and his hand 
trembled so. Harvie got pale and suddenly 
realized that Annie was not just a little sister. 
Poor Rags put maple syrup in his coffee and 
cream on his waffle in the excitement occasioned 
by the unwelcome news. 

They were at breakfast when we burst in on 
them, at breakfast and rather sore with all of us 
for having run off without them. Jessie was 
holding the fort alone, the only female present, 
as Miss Maria was still unable to get up. That 
beautiful young lady was looking lovelier than 
ever in a crisp handkerchief -linen frock. Her 
curls were very curly and her lovely brunette 
complexion not at all the worse for the scorching 
sun of the day before. My poor nose had six 
more freckles than when I came to Maxton, six 
more by actual count, and there was not room for 
the extra ones at all. Mary’s freckles were like 
the stars in the sky, every time you looked you 
could find another; Dee had'her share, too; and 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 215 

Dum had begun to peel as was her habit. Jessie 
was pretty, very pretty, but the picture of her 
with her face all greased up and the tick-like 
curlers covering her head would arise whenever I 
looked at her. 

“ Why doesn’t Mr. Pore leave Annie here with 
us until the submarine warfare is over with? ” 
asked Mr. Tucker. 

“ We never thought of suggesting it,” twee- 
died the twins. 

“ I did think of it but I knew she wouldn’t be 
willing to have Sir Arthur go alone,” I said, 
rather proud of myself for being the first one to 
give him his title. 

“ How much more suited he is to being a mem- 
ber of English aristocracy than engaging in mer- 
cantile pursuits in America,” laughed the gen- 
eral. “ I only wish his lovely wife might have 
shared the honor with him. Ah me, what a 
woman she was ! ” 

“ He was mighty cold and clammy about his 
brother’s death,” said Dee. “ When Annie asked 
if it was bad news he had he said he might call it 


216 A HOUSE PARTY 

bad news, but his tone was far from convinc- 
ing.” 

“ He hasn’t seen his brother for over twenty 
years and he rowed with all his family before he 
left England, so I reckon it was hard to squeeze 
out many tears over his death. I felt awful bad 
about the poor young son,” and Dum looked 
ready to shed tears herself without having to re- 
sort to the squeezing process. “ ‘ An untimely 
death in the Dardanelles ! ’ That sounds so 
tragic.” 

“ Yes, that made me feel like crying, too,” said 
Dee. “ Just think of a splendid young English- 
man, handsome and brave and charming, being 
shot to pieces by German bullets! I have an 
idea he had succeeded to the title and estates only 
a few days before, and while he was sad about 
his father, he still was looking forward to being 
the baronet when he got home.” 

“ What makes you think he was handsome? ” 
put in the more matter-of-fact Mary. 

“I am sure he must have looked like Annie, 
and just think what a wonderfully handsome 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 217 

man he must have been ! He had her lovely hair, 
I almost know he did, and great blue eyes and a 
strong, straight back,” and Dum wiped her own 
eyes that would fill when she thought of 
the splendid young Englishman gone to his 
death. 

“ I don’t like to break in on this grand orgy of 
feeling,” I said, “ but you must remember that 
Annie got her looks from her mother, as her fa- 
ther had none to spare. This poor young man 
may have been all the things you girls picture 
him to be, but he is just as likely to have inherited 
his looks from Uncle Arthur Ponsonby. He 
may have had no chin at all and have had cham- 
pagne-bottle shoulders and a long neck.” 

“ Page, how can you? Don’t you know that 
people who meet untimely deaths in the Darda- 
nelles are always brave and handsome? ” teased 
Zebedee. “ For my part, I am sorrier for the 
present baronet, Sir Arthur, than for the late 
lamenteds. Only think how far the poor man has 
drifted from all the manners and customs of his 
race! ” 


218 


A .HOUSE PARTY 


“Not manners, maybe customs! His man- 
ners are quite the thing to go with titles, I think. 
As for Annie, — she has a way with her that will 
make her shine in any society,” I asserted. 

Everyone agreed with me audibly but Jessie. 
She had not yet adjusted herself to look upon 
Annie as anything but the badly-dressed 
daughter of a country storekeeper, who could 
sing better than she could and had attracted three 
out of the nine beaux on the house-party. 


CHAPTER XV 


SLEEPY WAKES UP 

House-parties have to end sometime and the 
one at Maxton was no exception. We had been 
invited for two weeks, and although Miss Maria 
graciously asked us to extend the time of our 
stay, we felt that the old lady had had enough of 
high jinks for a while. We had become very 
fond of her and I think she liked us, too. The 
general was in love with the whole bunch, he de- 
clared. He made his gallant, bromidic speeches 
to each one in turn, playing no favorites. 

“ If I were fifty years younger I would show 
these chaps a thing or two,” he would say. 

My private opinion was that the chaps did not 

need a thing or two shown them, as they seemed 

quite on to the fact that Maxton was a romantic 

spot and that there is no time like the present for 

getting off tender nothings. There being Jacks 
219 


220 


A HOUSE PABTY 


to go around for the Jills and some to spare, if 
there were any heartaches they were among the 
males, as there were no wallflowers among the 
girls. 

If the death of Sir Isaac Pore and his son and 
heir did not cause overmuch grief in the heart 
of the storekeeper at Price’s Landing, it had a 
dire effect on three young men in the great house 
on the hill. The only way in which they could 
give vent to their feelings was in heroic at- 
tempts to assist in the inventory of the stock. 
That meant at least that they could be near 
Annie and gain her gratitude. Annie’s grati- 
tude was not a difficult thing to gain. She was 
in a state of perpetual astonishment that all of 
us loved her so much. 

“ What have I done to make all of you so kind 
to me? ” she would ask. And the answer would 
be: 

“ Everything, in that you are your own sweet 
self.” 

Mr. Pore, or rather Sir Arthur, seemed to 
think we were helping in the shop because of our 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 221 

admiration and respect for him, and since he 
thus flattered himself we let him go on thinking 
so, and even encouraged him in this delusion 
since it simplified matters for all of us. Sleepy 
even sneaked the daughter off on a lovely long 
buggy ride while Dum checked up a shelf full of 
dry-goods, supposed to be done by Annie. 

The seemingly impossible was accomplished 
and that before we left Maxton: a complete in- 
ventory of the stock of a crowded country store 
was made and in order, all because of the many 
helpers. A purchaser was found by the expedi- 
tious Zebedee, and everything, including the 
good will, sold, lock, stock, and barrel, at a very 
good price considering the haste of the transac- 
tion. 

Annie and her father actually did get off 
within the week. How it was accomplished I 
can’t see, and as we had left Maxton before they 
made their getaway I shall never know. Harvie, 
who was the only one of us left, said that Sir 
Arthur was as standoffish and superior as ever. 
He started on his journey with the same old * 


222 


A HOUSE PAETY 


Gladstone bag and, as far as Harvie could make 
out, the same English clothes he had brought to 
Price’s Landing all those years and years ago. 

“ If they weren’t the same, where on earth 
could he have bought any like them? They don’t 
make them in this country,” he said, when he 
told me of it. 

Harvie, having awakened to the fact that 
Annie was a very charming, beautiful girl, whom 
he had for years looked upon as a kind of sister 
but who was not a sister and was moreover very 
much admired by other members of his sex, now 
was making up for lost time as fast as possible. 
He had no feeling of noblesse oblige in regard to 
Sleepy. He surely had as much right to love 
Annie as George Massie had and more right to 
tell her of it, since she was almost his sister. He 
hovered around her to the last, doing a million 
little things to help her and assuring her in the 
meantime of his undying affection, but Annie 
never did seem to understand that he was being 
any more than a big brother to her. Never hav- 
ing had a big brother, she did not know that big 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 223 

brothers do not as a rule express their love for the 
little sisters in such glowing terms. 

George Massie went gloomily off when the 
house-party broke up. He felt that he could not 
in decency stay longer at Maxton since all the 
others were leaving, although he longed to be 
near Annie. He sought me out on the boat when 
we were bound for Richmond and sighing like a 
furnace sank down by my side. If it had been a 
sailboat we were traveling in instead of an old 
side-wheel steamboat, I am sure the great sigh 
he heaved would have sent us faster on our way. 

“ Something fierce! ” he muttered. 

“ Yes, it is hard, but maybe they will come 
back sometime, or perhaps when you get your 
degree you can go over to England and see her.” 

“ Get my degree! Do .you think I am going 
back to the University? Not on your life! ” 

“ But what will you do? You must have some 
ambition,” I said rather severely. 

“ Yes, I've got ambition all right; I’m going 
to do my bit in France as stretcher bearer. I de- 
cided last night.” 


224 


A HOUSE PABTY 


“ Really? ” 

“ Sure! I’m just wasting my time at the Uni- 
versity. I talked it out with Annie. She has 
lots of feeling about England and the war, and if 
she cares, then it is up to me to help her country 
some.” 

“Oh, Sleepy! I think that is just splendid 
of you,” I cried. “ When will you go? ” 

“ Ahem — I’m thinking of going on the same 
boat with Mr. — Sir Arthur Pore.” 

I could not help laughing. 

“ Does Annie know? ” 

“No, I was afraid she might make some ob- 
jection. I think I’ll just surprise her on the 
steamer.” 

“ Won’t you have to get passports and per- 
mits and things before you can go? ” 

“ Yes, I’ll set the ball rolling as soon as I get 
to Richmond. Air. Tucker is attending to Sir 
Arthur’s and I guess I’ll go see him as soon as 
we land. He knows how to do so many things.” 

That was certainly so. Mr. Jeffry Tucker not 
only could and would match zephyr for old 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 225 

ladies, but he knew just how to get passports 
for pompous English noblemen who had but re- 
cently kept country stores on the banks of the 
river, and for the lovely daughters. lie also 
knew how to get rushed-through passports for 
rich young medical students who had taken sud- 
den resolutions to do a bit in France because of 
a kind of vicarious patriotism. 

George Massie had a busy week. He must 
rush off to see his people, who no doubt were 
quite confounded by his unwonted energy. He 
must get the proper clothing for his undertaking 
and also make his will, since he had quite an es- 
tate in his own name. He must tell many rela- 
tions farewell and explain as best he could his 
sudden passion for carrying the wounded off of 
the battle fields. 

When he came in to tell the Tuckers good-by 
before he went to New York to embark on the 
steamer with the unsuspecting Pores, he looked 
almost thin and quite wide awake, so they told 
me. 

The Tuckers had tried to persuade me to wait 


226 A HOUSE PAETY 

in Richmond with them for a few days before go- 
ing to Bracken so that together we could see the 
last of our little English friend, for Sir Arthur 
and Annie were to take a train in Richmond for 
New York. But I had been too long away from 
my father and felt that I must hasten home to 
him. 

Needless to say that Zebedee had the passports 
all ready for them to sign and berths engaged on 
the New York sleeper and passage on an Eng- 
lish vessel, sailing the following Saturday. 

Tweedles told me that Annie clung to them 
at parting as though they had been a life rope. 
The poor girl felt that she was going into a 
strange cold world. It must have been even worse 
for her than the memorable time when she started 
on what she thought was going to be that lone- 
some, forlorn journey to Gresham. That trip 
had proven to be very enjoyable in spite of all 
her fears; and perhaps this journey across the 
ocean was not going to be so very forlorn, either. 

I should not relish much the idea of a trip 
with Sir Arthur Ponsonby Pore. I can fancy 


WITH THE TUCKEE TWINS 227 

his aloof manner with fellow passengers, who 
perhaps were seeking acquaintance with his 
lovely daughter ; his disregard for the comfort of 
others; his haughtiness with the steward. The 
only way to travel in peace with the baronet 
would be to have him get good and seasick be- 
fore the vessel got out of sight of Sandy Hook, 
and stay so until she was docked at Liverpool. 
Then he might prove a very pleasant traveling 
companion, provided he was so ill that he had to 
stay in his bunk. 

Of course as the days passed we became des- 
perately uneasy about Annie. It seemed a per- 
fect age since they had sailed and still no news 
of the safe arrival of the vessel. I was at 
Bracken, away from the constant calling of ex- 
tras that was the rule in the city during those 
stirring war times. Tweedles told me they 
rushed out in the night to purchase a paper every 
time an extra was called, fearing news of a dis- 
aster to the Lancaster , the old-fashioned wooden 
boat the Pores had taken. 

Zebedee had promised to telephone to them if 


228 


A HOUSE PAETY 


news came to his paper concerning the steamer, 
news either of disaster or safety. The following 
is the letter I received from Dee written in the 
excitement of a message but that moment re- 
ceived from her father. 


Richmond , V a. 


Dearest Page: 

Zebedee has just cabled me that he has 
had a telephone message from Liverpool that a 
mine had struck the Lancaster about five hours 
out from port and the open boats had to take to 
the passengers. All on board were saved al- 
though some of the passengers were much shaken 
up. (I hope Arthur Ponsonby was one of the 
much shaken.) We are greatly excited about 
poor Annie. She is so afraid of water. It is 
feared all baggage is lost. (Good-by to the 
Gladstone bag!) 

Dum and I can hardly wait for the cable that 
we just know Sleepy will send us as soon as he 
can. Aren’t we glad, though, that Sleepy was 
along? He will take care of Annie no matter 
what happens. It may be weeks and months be- 
fore we can get a letter from Annie, telling us all 
about it. We are awfully sorry it should have 
happened to Annie, but Dum and Zebedee and 
I just wish we had been along. I bet you do, too ! 

These times are so stirring, I don’t see how we 
can all of us sit still. If our country ever gets 
pulled into the mix-up I tell you I’m going to 
get in the dog fight, too. Zebedee says he is, too, 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 229 

and so is Dum. I want to study veterinary sur- 
gery so I can help the poor horses when they get 
wounded and look after the dear dogs who work 
so hard to bring in the wounded. Zebedee is 
afraid that is man’s work but I tell him bosh! 
plain bosh! There is no such thing as man’s 
work any more in this world. He says I’m an 
emancipated piece and I tell him I’m glad he 
realizes it. Dum and I are hard at work at war 
^relief work. We g v o three times a week and roll 
bandages. I like the work but Dum sits up and 
lets tears drop on the bandages, thinking about 
all the poor soldiers they are to bind up. I cry 
a little, too, sometimes. Zebedee says if we bawl 
over new bandages, what would we do over real 
wounds? I tell him salt is a g09d antiseptic and 
a few sincere tears won’t hurt the poor wounded. 

Dum and I have adopted a French war orphan 
between us. Ten cents keeps one for a day and it 
does seem mean of us not to give that much. We 
always waste that much money, and more, every 
day of our lives. It means only letting up a bit 
on the movies or drinking water instead of lime- 
ade when one is thirsty. Zebedee has got him- 
self one all by himself and he is going to keep it 
by letting up on one cigar a day. He says his 
smoke is bitter to him now that he realizes that 
every time he lights a ten cent cigar he might be 
feeding a little Belgian baby. We offered to get 
him some rabbit tobacco and dry it nicely so he 
could smoke it in a pipe, but he said never mind. 
Poor Zebedee is so choosey about his smoke that 
he would rather give it up altogether than not 
have it good. 


230 


A HOUSE PAETY 


We’ve got a scheme on hand for a jaunt but 
I’m going to let Zebeclee have the pleasure of 
springing it on you if the plan works out. Dum 
says I’m not leaving a thing for her to tell. She 
says it is not ethical for one member of a family 
to write such a long letter to a person that other 
members correspond with, but I tell her I have 
told you very little news and that my letter has 
been more taken up with psychology and the 
conduct of life. 

Of course I started this letter to tell you about 
Annie and the good ship Lancaster , but since all 
I know about it is that it hit a mine and all hands 
were saved in open boats I could not enlarge on 
that bit of news much. We will Jet you know 
when we hear more. 

Zebedee and Dum and Brindle send you much 
love. Give mine to Dr. Allison and Mammy 
Susan, also many hugs to the dogs. 

Affectionately, 


Dee. 


CHAPTER XYI 


THINGS HAPPENING 

One of the delights of leaving home is coming 
back, at least so I always felt about my beloved 
Bracken. I indulged in many little jaunts dur- 
ing the summer but each home-coming was as 
pleasant as the trips. First there had been the 
house-party at Maxton, which had been so full 
of good times, then a short stay at home and al- 
most before I had settled myself, a hurry call 
from the Tuckers to go to a mountain camp run 
by some very spunky girls from Richmond, the 
Carters. 

Those days in camp were a delightful experi- 
ence and quite an eye-opener as to what girls 
can do if it is up to them. The Carter girls had 
been brought up in extravagant luxury, but 
when their father had a nervous breakdown and 
they suddenly found themselves with no visible 
means of support, they jumped in and ran a 

week-end boarding camp on the side of a moun- 
231 


232 A HOUSE PAETY 

tain in Albemarle, and actually supported the 

whole family and made some money besides. 

They were the busiest people I ever saw, but 
they managed to tuck in a lot of fun along with 
it. I certainly hope to see more of those girls, 
as they interested me tremendously. Douglas 
was the oldesf; she seemed to be the balance 
wheel for the family. I never saw such poise 
in a young girl, — not a bit “ society,” either. She 
had given up college and was going to stay at 
home and help. Helen was the next, a stylish 
creature with more dash and swing to her than 
even my beloved Tweedles. She was the one 
who directed the cooking as though she had been 
catering to boarders all her life, and I was told 
that she had never thought of such a thing until 
the spring before, when her father got ill. She 
evidently had no head for money and I am afraid 
had an extravagant way with her that gave poor 
Douglas some trouble. 

Then came Nan, a perfect love of a little 
thing, all poetry and charm but with a con- 
science that made her do her duty in spite of pre- 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 233 

ferring to live in the clouds. Lucy was the 
youngest girl and showed promise of being per- 
haps the best-looking of all the very handsome 
sisters, but she was too young to say for certain. 
At any rate, she was a very attractive child. 
Then there was Bobby, the little brother, an en- 
fant terrible and a perfect little duck. 

Mr. Carter was the most pathetic figure I have 
ever seen: a big, strong man, accustomed to ac- 
tion and power, reduced to letting his daughters 
make a living for him. He seemed to have lost 
the power of concentration, somehow. Mr. 
Tucker said he thought he would get well but it 
was going to take a long time. He had worked 
beyond mental endurance trying to keep his 
family in luxury. 

Mrs. Carter was the kind of woman who recon- 
ciles one to being a half-orphan, not that my lit- 
tle mother would ever have been that kind, but I 
mean it is better to be motherless than to have the 
kind she was. I thought she was very pretty, 
very gracious, with a wonderful social gift, but 
the kind of woman who flops at the first breath 


234 A HOUSE PARTY 

of disaster. Those Carter girls will have her on 
their hands just like a baby until the end of time. 
Whenever she was crossed, she simply went to 
bed in a ravishing boudoir cap and bed sacque 
and there she lolled until she carried her point. 

The Carters were so interesting to me that I 
should like to tell more about them but they 
really should be in a book all to themselves, they 
and their week-end camp. I had never been right 
in the mountains before, but after my stay among 
them I felt that I liked it even better than the 
seashore. Father said that the last wonderful 
thing I saw was always the most wonderful thing 
in the world. He also said that that was just as 
it should be. That when persons begin to look 
backward all the time instead of forward, the su- 
tures of their skulls are too firmly knit together 
and all of their pleasures have to be of memory. 
New things make no impression on their brains. 
He said he intended to keep his skull in a semi- 
pliable state like a baby’s and go on looking at 
the world as a rattle for him to have a good time 
with. 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 235 

I had often thought that my dear father spent 
a terribly humdrum existence for a man of his 
ability and intense interest in current events. 
While I loved the country in general and 
Bracken in particular, I also loved to get out 
into the world occasionally and get a new out- 
look, a different view-point as it were ; get some- 
where where things were happening. Nothing 
much ever seemed to me to happen in the coun- 
try. 

One day I said as much to him. He smiled 
and drew me to him. 

“ Why, honey, things are happening all the 
time in the country just as much as in town. I 
like to get away occasionally, too, but not because 
I want to be where things are happening, — in 
fact, I like to get away from so many things hap- 
pening at once as they do in my life here as a 
country doctor. The things that happen in cities 
I feel more impersonal about.” 

“ But you like to read about the things that 
happen in cities.” 

“ Yes, and city people like to read about the 


236 A HOUSE PABTY 

things that happen in the country, too. Aren’t 
all the popular magazines filled with stories of 
rural life? ” 

“ Ye-s! But they are romances that are made 
up.” 

“ But not made up out of whole cloth! Come 
and go with me to-day on my rounds.” 

“ Oh, I’d love to, but Miss Pinkie Davis has 
come to sew for me and I haye to be here to 
help.” 

“ Let her stay and we will give her a holiday. 
Poor Miss Pinkie has precious few holidays. 
She can read all the new magazines and rest her 
busy fingers.” 

Of course Miss Pinkie was agreeable to the 
arrangement. She did have very few holidays 
and no time to read the romances she craved. 
We left her ensconced in a hammock on the 
shady porch with a pile of magazines beside her 
and a beatific smile on her paper doll .coun- 
tenance. Something interesting was already 
happening in the country, at least something in- 
teresting to Miss Pinkie. 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 237 

It was a wonderful day in late September. 
The winter corn had been cut and stacked in 
shocks that always reminded me of Indian wig- 
wams. The tobacco had been housed the week 
before and now from each tobacco barn arose a 
mist of blue smoke. Groups of men could be 
seen standing around every barn gathered there 
to take part in the sacred rite of curing the green 
tobacco. A steady fire must be kept up day and 
night, and all the men in the countryside seemed 
to feel it could not be done without the personal 
supervision of each and every one of them. 

“ Suppose the women had some important 
steady cooking to do where the fire had to be kept 
up day and night, do you think they would have 
to call in all the other women in the county to 
assist? ” laughed Father. “ Men are funny ani- 
mals.” 

“ The tobacco crop was pretty good, wasn’t 
it? ” I asked. 

“ Fine! Never saw a better. I guess many a 
poor soldier in the trenches will be thankful that 
it is so. They say this war is being fought on the 


238 


A HOUSE PAETY 


wheat and tobacco crops.” I thought Father 
gave me a sly glance, but when I asked him what 
he was looking at he said nothing much, he only 
thought my nose was growing a little. 

Everybody had a word of greeting for Dr. Al- 
lison as we drove by. We were stopped again 
and again, sometimes for a word of advice from 
the family physician as to Jim’s sore throat or 
Mary’s indigestion; sometimes to prescribe for 
a hog or cow that was indisposed, and once to 
decide if San Jose scale had attacked a peach 
orchard. We could not stop long with each per- 
son as we were on a hurry call, but Father al- 
ways had a moment to spare; and then the colt 
had to make up for lost time and was given free 
rein at every good stretch of road. 

The colt was the colt by courtesy and habit. 
He had long ago passed the skittish age, but his 
spirit was one of eternal youth and his ways so 
coltish that no other name seemed to suit him. 
One could as soon think of Cupid’s growing up 
to be an old gentleman as the colt’s ever becom- 
ing a safe, steady nag. Enough things happened 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 239 

in the country for him, and he thought that each 
thing that happened was something for him to 
dance and prance about. A flock of belated 
blackbirds twittering in an oak tree was enough 
to make him get the bit in his teeth and run a 
quarter of a mile. A rabbit running across the 
road was something to shy over, — and I agree 
with the colt in that. As many times as I have 
seen it, there is something about a Molly Cotton- 
tail as she lopes across the road that always 
startles me. She bobs up so suddenly from no- 
where and disappears as rapidly into the no- 
where. 

Driving the colt was an excitement in itself 
that must have kept life from becoming dull to 
my dear father. There could be no loafing on 
that job. Reins had to be well up in hand and 
the driver must be fully cognizant of things that 
the imaginative animal no doubt looked upon as 
possible enemies. Sometimes I think he was 
playing a game with himself and making excite- 
ment to keep his existence from being humdrum. 
At any rate, it was great fun to be behind the 


240 


A HOUSE PARTY 


spirited animal on that crisp September morn. 
No one could drive so well as Father. He had a 
sure, steady, gentle but firm touch on the rein 
that soothed the most nervous horse. Father’s 
driving always reminded me of Zebedee’s danc- 
ing. 

Our hurry call was to a young farmer’s wife. 
The gates were wide open as though we were 
expected and no obstacles were to delay us. The 
husband, Henry Miller, was waiting for us at 
the stile block. His face was drawn and white 
and great tears were rolling down his weather- 
beaten cheeks. 

“ She’s awful bad off. Doctor. I’m afraid 
she’s gonter die,” he whispered huskily. 

“ Oh no, my son! I have no idea of such a 
thing. Maybe you had better unhitch my horse. 
He is not much on the stand. Page, you help 
him, please.” 

Now Father knew perfectly well that I could 
look after the colt by myself, but he simply 
wanted to occupy Mr. Miller. Silently we un- 
did the straps and led him to the stable. I real- 


WITH THE TTJCKEE TWINS 241 

ized he was feeling too deeply; to listen to my 
chatter, so I kept very quiet. When we started 
back to the house I told him he must not bother 
about me, — that I had a book and would just 
make myself at home out in the summer-house. 

“ I will come, too,” he faltered. “ Looks like 
I’ll go crazy if I have to stay alone.” 

“ Oh, do come! Maybe you would like me to 
read to you.” 

“No, Miss Page! Just let me talk to you. 
You see I feel so bad about Ellen because she 
ain’t been back to see her folks. I didn’t know 
she wanted to go, but it seems she did and didn’t 
like to say so. I ought to have known about it. 
If I hadn’t have been a numskull I would 
a-known. I’ve been so happy just to be with her 
that I never thought she wasn’t just as happy to 
be with me.” 

“ Why, Mr. Miller, I am sure she was. 
Everybody is always saying how happy Mrs. 
Miller is. Only the other day I heard Sally 
Winn declare she never saw such a contented 
young married woman. Sally says lots of young 


/ 

242 A HOUSE PARTY 

married women are not happy; that it takes a 
long time for them to get used to husbands in- 
stead of sweethearts; but that your wife didn’t 
have to do that because you seemed just like a 
sweetheart all the time.” 

“ Did she say that, — did she truly? I wonder 
what made her think it.” 

“ Something your wife told her, I reckon! ” 

“ Oh, thank you! Thank you for that! She 
could have gone to her mother if I had known 
she wanted to.” 

“ Of course she could, but maybe she did want 
to go to her mother and didn’t want to leave you. 

I bet that was the reason she didn’t tell you she 
wanted to see her mother. She knew you would 
insist upon her going, and then she would have 
had to leave you.” 

Now the poor anxious young man was smiling. 
He wiped his eyes and grasped my hand. 

“ You are powerful like Doc Allison, Miss 
Page. He knows how to cure a sick spirit just 
as well as a sick body, and you sure can comfort 
a fellow, too.” 


WITH THE TUCKER TWIXS 243 

There was the creak of a screen door being 
hastily opened on the side porch of the farmhouse 
and an old colored woman came running out. 
Henry Miller jumped to his feet but could not 
go to meet her. F ear seemed to grip him. What 
news was she bringing? 

“ Marse Hinry, it’s a boy ! It’s a boy ! ” 

“ A boy? ” 

“ Yassir, a boy, an’ jes’ as peart as kin be, an’ 
Miss Ellen ” 

“ Is she dead? ” 

“Daid! Law, chile, she is the livinges’ thing 
you ever seed an’ what’s mo’ she is a-axin’ fer you 
jes’ lak she can’t stan’ it a minute longer ’thout 
she see you. Baby cryin’ fer you, too!” and 
sure enough we did hear a faint squeaky cry issu- 
ing from an upstairs room. 

The newly-made parent sprinted to the house 
as though he were in a Marathon race, and the 
old colored woman and I looked at each other 
and wiped the tears off that would roll down our 
cheeks. 

“ Young paws alius is kinder pitable,” she 


244 A HOUSE PABTY 

remarked, and then hastened back to her 

labors. 

Father came out soon, his lean face beaming 
with smiles, his arm thrown around the shoulders 
of the ecstatic Henry. We were to stay to din- 
ner at the farmhouse, much to the delight of the 
old colored cook. It was deemed a great privi- 
lege in the county to have Doc Allison stop for 
dinner. 

“ I done made a dumplin’ fer Marse Hinry,” 
she said, as we were sitting down to the hospi- 
table board. “ In stressful times men-folks mus’ 
eat or they gits ter broodin’ on they troubles, an’ 
whin men-folks gits ter broodin’ if’n they ain’t 
full er victuals fo’ yer know it they is full er 
liquor.” 

As Henry Miller was a most respectable, 
church-going young man this amused Father 
very much. 

“ That’s so, Aunt Min, so you feed him up. 
He had better look out, anyhow, because before 
you know it that young man upstairs will be 
whipping him.” 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 245 

This delighted the negress, who chuckled with 
glee as she passed the dumplings. 

“I is glad it’s a boy ’cep’n’ they is been so many 
boys born here lately that this ol’ nigger is be- 
ginning ter s’picion that these here battles I hear 
’bout is goin’ ter spread this-a-way. In war time 
all the gal babies is born boys.” 

“ Oh, I hope not, Aunt Min,” said Father 
gravely. 

“ Yassir! An’ the snakes! I never seed the 
like of snakes this summer gone by. That means 
the debble is busy an’ the debble is the father of 
war.” 

“ True, true!” sighed the doctor. “Well, I 
hope it won’t come to us until the youngster up- 
stairs is able to help defend us.” 

While we were at dinner, Father was called up 
on the Millers’ telephone. Mrs. Reed, an old 
lady on the adjoining farm, was very ill and the 
doctor must leave his dumpling unfinished and 
fly to her. The colt was harnessed with the ex- 
pedition used in a fire engine house and we were 
on our way in an incredibly short time. 


CHAPTER XVII 


MORE THINGS HAPPENING 

The Reeds were aristocrats of the first rank. 
There were no men in the family at all, no one 
but old Mrs. Reed, who had been a widow for at 
least forty years, and her two old maid daughters, 
Miss Elizabeth and Miss Margaret. 

Weston was a beautiful place if somewhat 
gone to seed by reason of the impossibility of ob- 
taining the necessary labor to keep it up. The 
house was a low rambling building, part brick 
and part frame, where rooms had been added on 
in days gone by when the family was waxing in- 
stead of waning, as was now the case. 

Miss Elizabeth insisted upon my coming in 
the house although I longed to be allowed the 
privilege of exploring the garden, which I had 
remembered with great pleasure from former 
visits with my father. No matter if potatoes had 

to go unplanted and wheat uncut, the ladies of 
246 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 247 

Weston had never permitted the flower garden 
to be neglected. I could see it from the window 
of the parlor through the half closed blinds. 
Cosmos and chrysanthemums were massed in 
glowing clumps, holding their own in spite of a 
light frost we had had the night before. The 
monthly roses, huge bushes that looked as 
though they had been there for centuries, were 
blooming profusely. 

Mrs. Reed was very, very low, so low that her 
daughters feared the worst. A door opened 
from the parlor into her bedroom, which the 
daughters spoke of always with a kind of rever- 
ence as “ the chamber.” Through this door I 
could hear the low clear voice of the old lady as 
she greeted the doctor. 

“ How do you do, James? I am glad to see 
you once more.” 

“Yes, Mrs. Reed, I am more than glad of the 
privilege of seeing you. May I feel your 
pulse? ” His tone was that of a man who re- 
quests to kiss one’s hand. 

“ You may, James, but there is no use. I am 


248 A HOUSE PAETY 

quite easy now, but only a few moments ago my 
heart quite stopped beating. Each time I swing 
a little lower. Did I hear someone say you had 
little Page with you? ” 

“ Yes, madame! She is in the parlor.” 

“ I want to see the child.” 

I heard quite distinctly but I did not want to 
go in, shrinking instinctively from the ordeal of 
speaking to the old lady who was swinging so 
low. 

Miss Elizabeth came for me. It seemed im- 
possible to me that anyone could be older than 
Miss Elizabeth, who looked a hundred. She was 
in reality almost seventy. The mother was 
ninety but did not look any older than the 
daughter nor much more fragile. Miss Mar- 
garet was much more buxom than Miss Eliza- 
beth and perhaps ten years younger. She was 
regarded by the two older ladies as nothing more 
than a child. 

“ Mother wants to see you,” whispered the 
weeping Miss Elizabeth. Miss Elizabeth always 
did weep about everything. In fact, in the 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 249 

course of her threescore years and almost ten, so 
many tears had flowed down her cheeks that they 
had worn a little furrow from the corner of her 
eye to the corner of her mouth, where it made a 
neat little twist outward just in time to keep the 
salt water out of her mouth. These wrinkles in 
the poor lady’s cheeks gave to her countenance 
a whimsical expression of laughter. The little 
twist at the end of the furrow was responsible for 
this. 

I went as bidden and hoped no one knew how 
I hated it. 

“ Page, Mrs. Reed wants to see you a mo- 
ment,” said Father very gently. 

“ How do you do? ” I whispered in such a wee 
voice that I felt as though someone away off had 
said it and not I. I knew that Mrs. Reed was 
deaf, too, and that I should have spoken in a loud 
tone. 

“ I’ll be better soon, child,” answered the old 
lady, who did not seem to be deaf at all. They 
say sometimes just before death that faculties be- 
come quite acute. 


250 


A HOUSE PAETY 


“ How pretty you are, my dear, almost as 
pretty as your mother. I hope you appreciate 
what a good man your father is.” Her voice was 
very low and I had to lean over to catch what she 
was saying. Her thin old hands were lying on 
the outside of the counterpane and they seemed 
to me to look already dead. I had never seen a 
dead person but I fancied that their hands must 
look just that way. I was deeply grateful to 
Fate that I did not have to take one of those 
hands. 

“ Yes, ma’am — I — believe I do. He is the best 
man in the world.” 

“ He is so honest. Now he knows I am almost 
gone and he would not tell me a lie about it for 
anything, — would you, James? ” 

“ No, madame!” and Father put his finger 
again on her wrist. Miss Elizabeth wept silently 
and Miss Margaret sobbed aloud. 

“ Tell me, has Ellen Miller’s baby come? ” 

“ Yes, I have just come from there. It is a 
fine boy and mother and baby doing well.” 

“ Good! I am glad when I hear some men are 


■WITH THE TUCKEK TWINS 251 

being bom into the county. Too many women ! 
Too many women! What are you girls crying 
for? ” she asked, turning her head a little on the 
pillow and looking with wonder at the two old 
ladies she called girls. “ There is no use in cry- 
ing for me. I am glad to die, — not that I have 
not been happy in my life, — yes, very happy! 
But there are more on the other side than this 
side now for me. Your father and brothers, my 
father and mother and brothers and sisters, all 
my friends. Do you think I’ll know them, 
James? ” 

“ Yes, madame, I think you will.” 

“ I don’t expect them to know me,” the faint 
old voice went on. “ How could they know me, 
so old and wrinkled and feeble? My husband 
was only fifty-five when he died and I was still 
nothing more than a child of fifty. My hair had 
not turned and I was very lively. Do you think 
he will be disappointed to find me so old? ” 

Her mind was wandering now and her voice 
trailed off to the finest thread. Father motioned 
me to go, but before I could turn the old lady 


252 


A HOUSE PAETY 


suddenly sat up in bed and called to her daugh- 
ters : 

“ Don’t forget to have the giant-of-battle rose 
trimmed back and those hollyhocks trans- 
planted! ” Then she fell back on her pillow and 
closed her eyes. 

I slipped out of the room and ran into the 
garden where Father found me a half hour 
later. 

“ How is Mrs. Reed, Father? ” I asked. He 
looked at me wonderingly. 

“ She is well again,” he answered gently. 
“ She was dead, my dear, before you left the 
room.” 

“ Oh, Father! ” I gasped. 

“ I was sorry for you to be there, but I got 
fooled. I thought the old lady was going to live 
a few hours longer, but doctors know mighty lit- 
tle when you come down to life and death. Come, 
honey! We must go. I have a sick child to see 
on my way home.” 

We had to stop at a little country store on the 
way to see the sick child to get some chewing- 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 253 

gum for the youthful patient. Father always 
had chewing-gum for the sick kiddies and that 
kept him in high favor with them. Doc Allison 
was looked upon as a kind of concrete Santy who 
gave un-Christmas presents. He carried pep- 
permints always in his pocket, and when a child 
was told to poke out his tongue he more than 
likely would find a peppermint on it before he 
pulled it in again. 

The child was better and our stay did not have 
to be very lengthy. All the children in the family 
had insisted upon showing their tongues to the 
giver of peppermints, which delayed us a few 
moments. 

“ And now for home! ” said Father, who was 
looking tired. He actually handed the reins to 
me to drive while he filled his pipe for a peaceful 
smoke. 

We were passing through a settlement where 
there was the usual post-office, country store, 
church and schoolhouse, with a few houses 
straggling around, when a young man ran out 
into the road and called desperately to Father to 


254 


A HOUSE PAETY 


stop. I drew rein and he came panting to the 
buggy. 

“ Doc Allison, please come be witness for us! ” 

“ Witness? What for?” 

44 Well, Julia and I have walked off to get 
married. I won’t say 4 run off ’ because both of 
us are of age and have been of age for a good 
five years. But Julia’s mother is that cantanker- 
ous that she won’t let her get married if she 
knows about it, and so we have come to the par- 
son’s with license and all; but he says we must 
have witnesses and there’s no one in the settle- 
ment right now but the postmaster and the 
storekeeper and they can’t leave their jobs, and 
besides they are afraid of the old lady. She is 
on her way here now, I believe, so you’ll have to 
hurry.” 

We found the bride in the parson’s parlor 
looking nervously out of the window. She, too, 
was afraid of the old lady. I was sorry for the 
parson because he must have been afraid, too, but 
he went manfully through the ceremony. He 
had hardly finished with: 44 Whom God hath 


WITH THE TTJCKEB TWINS 255 

united let no man put asunder,” when there was a 
terrible commotion in the road. An old lady 
came driving up in a spring wagon. She had 
blood in her eye, a terribly rampagious old lady. 
She stepped out of the wagon and I noticed she 
had on top boots. She wore a short, scant skirt 
and a workman’s blue chambray shirt and a 
man’s hat pulled down over as determined a 
countenance as I have ever seen. 

“Mrs. Henderson!” gasped the preacher, 
turning pale, and well he might as Mrs. Hender- 
son was someone to stand in awe of. 

“ Come on home here, girl! ” she said roughly, 
as she made her way into the parson’s parlor. 

“ Her home is where I live now,” said 
the young man, putting his arm around the 
bride. 

“ Nonsense! I never got too late to anything 
in my life. I telephoned these folks over here 
that they had better not stand as witness to any 
ceremony until I got here, and I know they 
wouldn’t do it.” She had been too enraged to 
notice Father and me, but now when Father 


256 


A HOUSE PARTY 


stepped up and spoke to her, she fell back in 
confusion. 

“ My daughter and I were fortunately in time 
to witness the ceremony,” he said quietly. “ It 
is all over now and your daughter is safely mar«$ 
ried.” 

“ Married! ” 

“ Yes, Mrs. Henderson, and I advise you to 
sit still a moment and compose yourself. You 
will have apoplexy some of these days flying off 
in these rages.” He looked at her very sternly. 
“ Your daughter has married a good young fel- 
low and she will be much happier than she would 
be remaining single.” 

“ What business is it of yours, I’d like to 
know? ” 

“ No business at all, except that I was asked to 
witness the ceremony by your son-in-law; and if 
you should get sick from the excitement you are 
working yourself into, you will send for me post 
haste,” answered Father coolly. 

“Never! Not after the bad turn you have 
done me! ” 


WITH THE TTJCKEB TWINS 257 

“ Well, that’s as you choose,” he laughed. 

Then he kissed the bride, who had said never a 
word but clung to her husband; shook hands 
with the groom and the parson; held out his hand 
to the irate, booted old woman. She would none 
of him, however, but folded her arms and sniffed 
indignantly. She made me think of : 

“But Douglas ’round him drew his cloak, 

Folded his arms and thus he spoke : 9 9 

One couldn’t help laughing at her but feeling 
sorry for her, too. 

“ She’ll have to pay for this,” said Father, as 
we started again for home. “ She has been go- 
ing into rages like this all her life and usually has 
a spell of sickness after one like to-day’s.” 

“ But, Father, you surely would not go to her 
after the way she spoke to you! ” 

“ Of course I would if she needs me. Country 
doctors can’t be too touchy. It isn’t as though 
she could get someone else as she could in town. 
In cities a doctor isn’t so important as he is in 
the country. There are always plenty more to 


258 A HOUSE PABTY 

answer a call* that he turns down. I have never 

in my life refused a patient.” 

We had a quiet drive home, Father smoking 
his pipe, while I gave undivided attention to the 
prancings and shyings of the colt. I was think- 
ing of all the happenings of the day. 

“ A penny for your thoughts! ” he said, pinch- 
ing my ear. “ I bet I know what you are rumi- 
nating.” 

“ Well!” 

“ You have come to the conclusion that a good 
deal can happen in a country neighborhood in a 
day: a birth, a death, a marriage and a quarrel.” 


CHAPTER XVIII 


THE END OF AN EVENTFUL DAY 

Things kept on happening. When I got out 
of the buggy to open the big gate leading into 
the avenue, a gate that was supposed to work by 
pulling a string but which never did, I saw some 
peculiar tracks in the dust of the road. 

“ An automobile has gone in,” I exclaimed, 
“ and hasn’t gone out, either! Look, the tracks 
don’t come back ! ” 

“ Heavens ! I do hope I am not to go out 
again,” said Father wearily. “ I’d like to sit on 
the back of my neck in my sleepy-hollow chair 
and talk or listen as the case might be. I am too 
tired even to read.” 

“ Me, too! And hungry’s not the word ! ” 

“ A midday dinner gets mighty far off by sup- 
per time. I hope Susan realizes that.” 

259 


260 


A HOUSE PARTY 


A dusty Ford car was drawn up near the stile 
block. It looked familiar, but then all Fords 
have a way of looking that. 

“ Who on earth can it be? Well, if I have to 
go out again at least you and the colt won’t,” 
sighed the poor country doctor. “ I am going 
to make the owner of that car carry me wherever 
I am to go and what’s more bring me back. I 
am not going to sit on the front seat with him, 
either, and listen to his jabber. Me for the rear 
and a whole seat to myself. I might even get a 
nap.” 

A sudden opening of the front door and who 
should come tearing out but Dum and Dee 
Tucker and Zebedee? Of course the lines of the 
dusty car were familiar: Henry Ford himself, 
faithful servitor! 

The tired feeling vanished very quickly in our 
joy at the disclosure of the owner of the car. 
Father was always glad to see the Tuckers but 
was doubly glad now, because it being the Tuck- 
ers, meant it was not someone to snatch him 
away from his sleepy-hollow chair. 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 261 

At Mammy Susan’s instigation the twins were 
already installed in my room. There were plenty 
of guest chambers at Bracken, but we always 
liked to be in the same room. Whenever we had 
tried sleeping in separate rooms we felt we had 
missed something. 

“ How did it happen? ” I cried, hugging the 
twins again as we hastened to my room to make 
ourselves fit for the supper that Mammy Susan 
warned us she was a-dishin’ up. 

“ Well, we are having a Tucker discussion and 
we thought you and Dr. Allison should be called 
in consultation, especially as you are one of the 
parties concerned,” answered Dum. 

“ Me? ” 

“ Yes, you! We’d like to know what plan we 
could make where you were not concerned,” put 
in Dee. 

“ Please tell me what it is! ” 

“ Wait until after supper, and when the men- 
folks light their pipes, then we can talk it out. 
You can do twice as much with Zebedee when he 
is fed,” said the knowing Dee. 


262 * A HOUSE PAKTY 

“ Father, too, is more amenable to reason,” I 
laughed. 

Mammy Susan had fully realized that a mid- 
day dinner is a long way from supper and had 
planned a royal feast for us, and when the Tuck- 
ers arrived she added to her menu to suit their 
tastes and appetites. Mammy Susan always re- 
membered what guests liked best, and no matter 
how much trouble it was to her, usually managed 
to have that particular dish. The Tuckers were 
prime favorites with the dear old woman and she 
could not do enough for them. 

Supper over, we adjourned to the library 
where a cheery wood fire was crackling in the 
great fireplace. There was frost in the air and a 
fire was quite acceptable, although we had the 
windows wide open. Father and I loved to make 
up a big fire and then have plenty of cold fresh 
air. 

“ I can’t see the use er heatin’ up the whole er 
Bracken, but if Docallison is a-willin’ ter pay 
fer cuttin’ the wood, ’tain’t fer me ter ’jecV’ said 
Mammy Susan as she peeped in to see that there 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 263 

was plenty of wood, hoping in her secret soul 
that there would not be so she could have some 
excuse for quarreling with the yard boy. 
Mammy Susan waged an eternal warfare with 
the yard boy, whoever he might be. We had so 
many it was hard to keep up with their changing 
names, so Father called them all George. 

It was dear Mammy’s one failing. She simply 
could not live in peace with other servants. We 
had long ago given up trying to have a house- 
maid, as Mammy Susan would have complained 
of the lack of efficiency of a graduate of a do- 
mestic science school of the first standing. No 
one could help her cook. Mrs. Rorer herself 
would have been found wanting in the culinary 
department of Bracken. 

“Humph! Wood enough fer onct!” she 
grumbled. “ If’n I hadn’ er got right bellin’ 
that there so-called George there wouldn’ er been. 
He is the triflinges’ nigger,” she mumbled, as she 
went through the hall. Zebedee ran after her 
and her grumblings were changed to chucklings 
by something that passed between them. 


264 


A HOUSE PAETY 


“ Poor old Susan!” said Father, as he sank 
into the deepest hollow of his chair. “ She is so 
capable herself that she expects all of her race to 
toe the mark, too. She is very lenient with the 
white people whom she loves and absolutely 
adamantine with the coloreds. The white folks 
can do no wrong and the black folks can do no 
right.” 

Pipes were filled for the two parents and a box 
of candy opened for the daughters, and then we 
were ready for the business of the day to be dis- 
cussed. 

“ Dr. Allison, what are you going to do with 
Page this winter? ” asked Mr. Tucker. 

“ Do with Page! Why — nothing but — noth- 
ing at all.” 

“ Oh, but, doctor ” broke in Dum and in 

the same breath Dee clamored: 

“We want ” but nobody heard what we 

wanted as I had to put in my oar saying I 
thought I ought to stay at home. 

“ Now, see here, if we all of us talk at once 
we won’t get anywhere, and we might just as 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 265 

well have stayed in Richmond,” complained 
Zebedee. 

“ Well, let’s appoint a chairman then,” I sug- 
gested, “ and everybody address the chair. I 
nominate Mr. Tucker chairman pro tern.” 

He was duly elected. 

“ Nominations are in order for chairman,” and 
the chairman pro tern rapped for order. 

“ I nominate Mr. Tucker for chairman,” said 
Father contentedly from his easy chair. 

“ I second the nomination,” from me. 

“ I nominate Dr. Allison! ” cried Dum. 

“ Second the nomination! ” said Dee, jumping 
to her feet for a speech. “ Zebedee is too Mr. 
Tuckerish when he gets in the chair to suit me, 
and besides he will have to be talking too much in 
this meeting to occupy the chair with any grace.” 

“ I withdraw my name as candidate,” said the 
first nominee graciously. “ Any other nomina- 
tions? The chair hears none, — then it is in order 
to make the election of Dr. Allison unanimous.” 
It was done so with three rousing cheers. 

Father always enjoyed the Tuckers’ foolish- 


266 A HOUSE PAETY 

ness and he was now in a state of relaxation and 
contentment, after a strenuous day spent in do- 
ing his duty, that fitted in well with our cheerful 
guests. 

“ Well, I’m glad to have the chair if I can sit 
in it,” he said. “ Friends, since there are no 
minutes, we can dispense with the reading of 
them. What is the business of the day? ” 

“ Mr. President, what are we going to do with 
our daughters this coming winter? ” said Zebe- 
dee, rising to his feet and speaking after due ac- 
knowledgment from the chair. “ 4 The time has 
come ’ the walrus said, 4 to talk of many things,’ 
but this business of occupying these girls, whom 
a Merciful Providence has confided to our care, 
is a serious matter. They are too young to stop 
school altogether, especially since they don’t 
want to make debuts ” 

“ Who said we didn’t? We’d do anything 
rather than go back to school,” interrupted Dum. 

“ Mr. Tucker has the floor,” said Father with 
mock severity. 

“ I rise to a question of privilege,” announced 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 267 

Dee solemnly. “ We are ’most as old as Zebedee 
was when he got married and quite as old as our 
mother was.” At this Zebedee laughed a little 
and wiped his eyes once. He always had a tear 
ready for his young wife who was spared to him 
such a little while. 

“ Well, honey, even if you are, times have 
changed. Young folks don’t stop school as soon 
as they used to.” 

“ Didn’t I tell you he would get Mr. Tucker- 
ish? Just listen to him! Talking about young 
folks as though he were a million.” 

“ Address the chair! ” and Father rapped for 
order. 

“ May I ask your indulgence for a moment, 
Mr. President? ” asked Zebedee meekly. “ As I 
was saying, when the gentleman from nowhere 
interrupted me: our daughters are too young to 
stop studying altogether. Don’t you think 
so?” 

“ If you will allow the chair to express an 
opinion, I am afraid they are.” 

“ Of course Gresham’s burning down was most 


268 


A HOUSE PAETY 


inopportune, as they would have been safely 
placed for another year there, but now that it is 
burned and not rebuilt yet ” 

“We wouldn’t go back there, anyhow, with 
that old Miss Plympton bossing things,” asserted 
Dum. 

“ Now what I want to find is some way to have 
them go on studying and learning and still not be 
bored to death,” and Zebedee sat down. 

“ A Daniel come to judgment! ” I whispered. 

“ Are you addressing the chair? ” asked Fa- 
ther. 

“ No, I was just talking to myself.” 

“ Of course, I want to study art more than 
anything in the world! ” exclaimed Dum, bounc- 
ing on her feet and forcing an acknowledgment 
from the chair before Dee had time to get it. “ I 
can’t see the use in burdening myself with Latin 
and math when I am nearly dead to model 
things.” 

“ Well, you haven’t overburdened yourself 
with knowledge yet, I am glad to say,” teased 
her father. 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 269 

“ Are you addressing the chair? ” asked our 
president sternly. “ If not, pray do so.” 

“ Well, Mr. President, I want to study physi- 
ology and anatomy,” said Dee. “ And for the 
life of me I can’t see what good ancient history 
and French would do me.” 

“ And I want to be a writer, and it seems to 
me the best way to be one is — just to be one,” I 
remarked. 

“ Exactly! ” smiled Father. 

“ And now we want to talk over what is the 
best way for these girls to get what they want and 
still not be idle,” said Mr. Tucker. “ I should 
like to hear what our honored president has to 
say.” 

“ Well, friends, this has kind of been sprung 
on me. I have been living in a kind of fool’s 
paradise, thinking that maybe our girls knew 
enough to stop; but I see that I was wrong. 
Girls never know enough to stop. I’ll let my 
third do whatever you let your two-thirds do, if 
it isn’t too wild.” 

“ But, Father, I am going to stay right here 


270 A HOUSE PARTY 

at Bracken with you! You know you need 

me.” 

“ Of course I need you, but you don’t think 
I need you any more than Tucker needs his 
daughters. You will settle down soon enough 
and now is the time to gather material for writ- 
ing. Things make an impression on you now 
that wouldn’t when you are older. One can put 
off writing longer than getting experience,” and 
Father drew me down on the arm of his chair. 
“ Where do you think these monkeys should go 
to get these varied industries they are longing 
for, Tucker? ” 


New York, I should say.” 


CHAPTER XIX 


PLANS FOR THE FUTURE 

New York! The very sound of the name 
thrilled me. It was all I could do to keep from 
following the twins in their demonstration of joy 
and gratitude lavished on their father. I con- 
tented myself, however, by rumpling up my fa- 
ther’s hair. 

“When?” gasped Father, when I had fin- 
ished with him. 

“Immediately if not sooner!” said Zebedee, 
coming out unscathed from the embraces of his 
girls. “ I have been thinking a lot about it and 
I really believe it would be the best thing for 
them. They can in a way find themselves, and 
they don’t get in any more scrapes without us 
than they do with us.” 

“ That’s so,” agreed Father. 

“ Oh, we won’t get in any scrapes at all! ” de- 
clared Dee. 


271 


272 


A HOUSE PARTY 


“ Not a single one, if you only trust us!” 
maintained Dum. 

“ I’m not going to take my oath upon it that 
you won’t get into some, but if you talk over 
anything you are contemplating, in the way of 
adventure, with wise little Page, I don’t believe 
your scrapes will amount to much.” 

Zebedee always complimented me by insisting 
that my judgment was good, and for a wonder, 
the girls did not mind when he praised me. They 
were very jealous of their father’s praise when 
it was laid on too thickly, except where I was 
concerned, but they agreed with him heartily 
when he lauded me to the skies. 

“ You shouldn’t say that,” I said, blushing. 
“ I might prove myself unworthy of the trust 
imposed in me, — and then what? ” 

“ Then I shall have to declare myself at fault 
in character reading.” 

“ But, Page, you know you always hold us 
clown! When we get into trouble it is against 
your judgment. If we listen to you, we keep 
straight,” said Dum. 


WITH THE TUCKEE TWIKS 273 

“ You mean I preach! ” 

“ That’s the funny thing about you, Page: you 
give us sage, grown-up advice without preaching. 
We wouldn’t listen a minute if you preached.” 

“ All right, I promise never to do that objec- 
tionable thing,” I laughed. “ But really and 
truly, I don’t think Father ought to afford this 
trip for me.” 

“ Child, it’s not a trip,” and Father put his 
arm around me again. “ It’s part of your edu- 
cation. New York need not be such an expen- 
sive place if you girls go there with economical 
ideas in your heads, instead of extravagant ones.” 

“Certainly! We had better allowance them 
and that will be part of their training, as well as 
what they will get from the several schools. My 
girls know very little about finances and it is 
high time they learned. Experience is the only 
way for them to learn, as whenever I try to in- 
still in them principles of economy they say I 
am Mr. Tuckerish,” and Zebedee tried to look 
stern. 

The idea of his instilling principles of economy 


274 


A HOUSE PAKTY 


in anybody’s mind was so funny all of us had to 
laugh. One thing Mr. Tucker insisted on was 
not spending money until you had it; but the 
minute you did have it, what was it meant for but 
to spend? “ Easy come, easy go ! ” was the motto 
for the whole Tucker family. 

“ Oh, we will live so cheap I haven’t a doubt 
we’ll save oodlums of money ! ” cried Dum. 
“ Mrs. Edwin Green told me a lot about how 
cheap one can live in Bohemia. She told us 
whenever we went to New York she was going to 
give us a letter of introduction to her brother and 
sister-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Kent Brown.” 

Mrs. Edwin Green was the lovely young 
woman we had met in Charleston when we took 
our famous trip down there. She was a Miss 
Molly Brown of Kentucky who had married 
Professor Edwin Green of Wellington Col- 
lege. They were the very nicest couple I ever 
knew and we became great friends with 
them. We corresponded with her and a letter 
from “ Molly Brown ” was highly prized by all 
of us. 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 275 

“ Yes, and she said we were to visit her at 
Wellington if we got anywhere near. Won’t it 
be great? ” and Dee danced around the library 
from pure glee. 

“ How will we live in New York? ” I asked. 
“ Shall we board or what? ” 

“ Board, by all means ! If you try to live any 
other way you will run into debt, I am afraid,” 
said Zebedee. 

“ But we just naturally despise boarding,” 
pouted Dum. “ We’ve been boarding all our 
lives, it seems to me.” 

“ But when you board, you are in a measure 
chaperoned,” said her cautious parent. 

“Chaperoned! Oh, Zebedee, you make me 
laugh. What boarding-house keeper has time to 
chaperone? Besides, isn’t Page along to chaper- 
one?” 

“ What do you think about it, Page? Come 
along now with that sage advice,” teased Father. 

“ I have never boarded and don’t know how 
I’d like it, but it seems to me the best thing for 
us to do would be to board when we first get 


276 A HOTJS^ PARTY 

there, and then if we can’t stand it, take a little 

flat and keep house, or rather, flat.” 

“Ah, I see why your advice is so sought after 
by our worthy friends, the Tuckers; you are as 
wise as Solomon and cut the baby in two and 
satisfy all parties. You will go to boarding to 
suit Tucker and then get a flat to suit the daugh- 
ters', eh, honey? ” 

“ Fifty-fifty is a safe course to pursue, and 
safety first is best and wisest for an official um- 
pire,” I maintained. 

“ I must say that the oracle has spoken well,” 
said Zebedee. “ Of course, if they are not happy 
boarding they must not keep to it, but it is better 
for them to start that way. They can learn the 
ropes and decide later on to get a flat if it seems 
wiser. We can go on with them and establish 
them, eh, doctor? ” 

“ I reckon so, if my patients behave. Now 
that old Mrs. Reed is dead, I can leave perhaps — 
Ellen Miller’s baby safely here, too! ” 

“ Oh, Father, that will be simply grand, if you 
can only go ! ” 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 277 

“ I haven’t had a trip for a long, long time, 
and I think it is up to me to treat myself.” 

All of us thought so, too. It made it easier 
for me if Father was contemplating going with 
us for a little recreation. He worked so hard, 
had so little fun in his life. What fun there was 
he made for himself by treating life as something 
very amusing when all was told. His patience 
was only equalled by his sense of humor. 

“ Don’t give out that you are going on a trip, 
Father, and then all of your cranky patients 
won’t have time to trump up any illnesses. If 
Sally Winn hears of your intended departure, 
she will get up seven fits of heart failure and 
more fluterations and smotherines than enough 
to keep you at home.” 

“ Poor Sally! I wish she could go on a trip 
herself. It would do more towards curing her 
than all the pink, pump water in the world.” 

Sally Winn was Father’s hypochondriacal pa- 
tient who called him up at all hours of the day 
and night for an imaginary heart trouble that 
was supposed to be carrying her off. She did not 


278 A HOUSE PAETY 

feel safe with Father out of the county and never 

let him get away if she could help it. 

“ Why don’t you suggest it to her? She 
might come on and visit her cousin, Reginald 
Kent.” 

“ Reginald Kent ! By J ove, I forgot that fel- 
low when I proposed New York as a good place 
for you girls to top off your very incomplete edu- 
cation,” and Zebedee groaned. 

“ Well, what is the matter with Reginald 
Kent? ” bridled Dum. 

“ Matter! Nothing’s the matter, that’s what’s 
the matter. See here, Dum Tucker, if you go to 
New York and fall in love with that good-look- 
ing, clever young man I’ll kill myself,” declared 
the desperate Zebedee, always afraid that some 
man would come along and cut him out with his 
girls. 

“ Nonsense, Zebedeedlums ! Reginald Kent 
will have to fall in love with me before I fall in 
love with him.” 

“ Well, if that’s so, I’ll fix him! I’ll tell him 
what a bad proposition you are: mean, ungener- 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 279 

ous, deceitful, secretive. I’ll put him on to you.” 
As these were all the things Dum was not, we felt 
safe. 

“ Shan’t we let Mary Flannagan know our 
plans? She may want to join us there,” sug- 
gested Dee. 

“ Of course we want dear old Mary,” Dum 
and I cried together. 

We all of us thought with regret of what a 
winter like the one we were planning to have 
would have meant to Annie Pore. 

Mary was a great favorite with both Father 
and Mr. Tucker, so they readily consented to our 
writing to her, suggesting that she should join 
us in New York if her mother thought well of the 
plan. 

“ She can go on with her movie stunts, and 
take up dancing and gym work in real earnest 
under the right instructors,” said Dee. 

“ I hope she won’t try to climb down any walls 
in New York,” I laughed. “ We mustn’t get in 
a flat with ivy on the walls.” 

“ Oh, so it is to be a flat, is it? I understood 


280 


A HOUSE PAKTY 


you were to board first/’ said Zebedee, pretend- 
ing to be insulted. 

“ So we are, but of course we will end up in a 
flat, and I fancy Mary will stand in awe of the 
boarding-house keeper enough to keep her from 
scaling her walls.” 

Our whole evening was spent in talking over 
our plans for topping off our education in New 
York. Father and Zebedee were like two boys 
in the suggestions they made. They had perfect 
faith in us, knowing that we had sense enough to 
bring us safely through the experience. I have 
wondered since if our mothers had been alive if 
they would have consented to the plan, but, of 
course, if our mothers had been alive, our educa- 
tion would not have been quite so loose-jointed. 
Mothers are much more particular than fathers 
about their daughters’ education. 

To be sure, Mrs. Flannagan did consent to 
Mary’s going, but then she was rather a hap- 
hazard lady herself, looking upon life with a 
humorous twinkle in her Irish eye. She believed 
heartily in the doctrine of live and let live, and, 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 281 

forsooth, if Mary had mapped out for herself a 
career as a movie actress, why let her work it out t 
She, her mother, was certainly not going to block 
her game. 

Mammy Susan was the one who kicked up 
about my going. For once she and Cousin Park 
Garnett were of the same mind. Cousin Park 
almost got out an injunction on Father to re- 
strain him as one who was not in his right mind. 
A lunacy commission would have had him locked 
up in the State Asylum, according to that irate 
dame. 

She never would have known about my going 
if she had not chosen to make a visitation at 
Bracken just when I was in the throes of getting 
ready to spend the winter in New York. Her 
own house was having some repairs, so she had 
made a convenience of our hospitality to escape 
the discomforts of paperhangers and painters. I 
was afraid at first that she would stay so long 
F ather could not get away, but a lawsuit she was 
engaged in came to court and she was forced to 
cut her untimely visit short. I found out after- 


282 


A HOUSE PAETY 


wards that the case, which was a trifling matter 
of back-yard fences, was put up first on the 
docket by some adroit wire-pulling done by no 
less a person than Mr. Jeffry Tucker, the ever 
ready. It was done so silently that Cousin Park 
never found it out. She was forced to return to 
her dismantled house, much to the regret of the 
workmen who were revelling in the absence of an 
exacting housekeeper. 

Mammy Susan, however, had her say out in 
regard to my going away from home: “ I’s 
gonter speak my min’ if’n it’s the las’ ac’ er my 
life. Gals ain’t called on ter be a-trapsin’ all the 
time. Mammy’s baby ain’t never gonter be con- 
tent at Bracken no mo’. Always a-goin’ an’ 
never a-comin’. An’ me’n Docallison so lone- 
some, too. I wisht you was twins — I ’low I’d 
keep one er you at home.” 

“ Which one, Mammy Susan? ” 

“ T’other one!” 



MAMY SUSAN, HOWEVER, HAD HER SAY OUT 
IN REGARD TO MY GOING AWAY FROM HOME. 
Page 282. 






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CHAPTER XX 


A LETTEU FROM ANNIE PORE TO PAGE ALLISON 

Grantley Grange , 
Grantley , England . 

My dearest Page: 

It takes such an interminable time to get 
mail in these war times that I am afraid my letter 
will seem like last year’s almanac by the time it 
reaches you. I must begin at the beginning and 
tell you of our journey across the ocean, but be- 
fore I plunge into the lengthy recital I must in- 
form you that I am very happy in my new home. 
I could not be anything but happy when I realize 
how much better off poor Father is. Of course 
the family is in the deepest mourning because of 
the death of Uncle Isaac and my cousin Grant, 
and there is an air of sadness in the whole village 
of Grantley; but everybody is very kind to us 
and I am sure I shall soon grow to love my aunts, 
the Misses Grace and Muriel Pore. These ladies 
are older than my father but they are quite 
strong and robust and it is wonderful what they 
can accomplish in the way of work. 

All the women of England are busy at one 
thing or another. Women, great ladies who have 
never done any form of work before, not even 
283 


284 


A HOUSE PARTY 


dressed their own hair, are washing dishes in hos- 
pitals or doing other menial tasks. 

Uncle Isaac was a widower, so the aunts have 
had entire charge of the housekeeping at Grant- 
ley Grange for many years. I think they are 
very kind to me in not looking upon me as an 
interloper. 

Aunt Grace tells me that their father, my 
grandfather, bitterly regretted his sternness to- 
wards my father and mother and was willing at 
any time to make amends, but my father would 
never answer his letters. Poor Father is so sen- 
sitive. That has always been his trouble. I live 
in constant terror now for fear someone will hurt 
his feelings and he will refuse to see people or 
make himself miserable. He is to make himself 
useful and serve his country by teaching the boys 
in a school at Grantley. All of the young teach- 
ers have gone to the front and the nation needs 
teachers for the boys and girls. I am so happy 
that Father is to serve his country,, somehow, and 
this is, after all, a very noble service as it is for 
the future good of the British Empire. 

I know you wonder what I am going to do. I 
was willing to nurse if my aunts thought it wise, 
but was relieved when they decided that I could 
be of more use doing other things that life has 
already trained me to do. I know I should fail 
at the crucial moment as a nurse. I am so timid 
and do not seem to be able to shake off this shy- 
ness. It has been decided that I shall go every 
day to sing to the soldiers in the neighboring hos- 
pitals. That sounds like very little to do but 
when I tell you that I spend on an average of 


WITH THE TUCKER TWIKS 


285 


seven hours a day going to the various hospitals, 
you will realize that while it is very little to do, it 
takes a great deal of time to do it. 

So many of the old estates near here have been 
turned over to the Government for hospitals that 
one can motor from one to the other in a short 
time. The wounded soldiers are very kind to me 
and express themselves as liking very much to 
hear me sing. They like the American songs, 
especially the darky songs.' I sang “ Clar de 
Kitchen ” to them yesterday and they made me 
give them three encores. I thought of the last 
time I sang it when we had the circus at Maxton, 
and I choked with emotion at the remembrance 
of all of my dear friends. 

Life at Price’s Landing seems very far off and 
unreal, although there are times when this life 
seems to be the unreal thing and I expect any 
moment to awaken and find it all a dream. I re- 
member in my little room over the store how low 
the ceiling was, so low over my bed where it 
sloped to the dormer window that I could lie 
there and touch it with my hand, and many a 
time have I bumped my head when I sprang too 
hurriedly from my bed. I learned to put up my 
hand and gauge the distance before I got up, in 
that way saving my poor head many a bump. 
I find myself now, when morning comes and the 
sun peeps in the windows of my great bedroom, 
reaching up expecting to touch the low ceiling of 
my little room in Virginia. It gives me a strange 
sensation, almost as great a shock as when you 
take one more step up when you have reached the 
top of the stairs. 


286 


A HOUSE PAETY 


The ceilings at Grantley Grange are quite as 
high as any I have ever seen. Too high for 
beauty, I think, but I don’t dare say so. My 
aunts think perhaps there are more wonderfully 
beautiful places than the Grange, but they have 
never seen them, — except the great show places, 
of course. It is very beautiful and the time may 
come when I shall feel at home, but I still feel 
strange and something of an alien. 

Father is as at home as though he had never 
left England. I wish all of you could see poor 
Father in his proper surroundings. He always 
was so out of place in the store. I think he felt 
irritated all the time that he was doing what he 
was doing, but a certain obstinacy in his charac- 
ter kept him from seeking more congenial em- 
ployment. His sisters are very tender with him 
and I am hoping that he will begin to show to 
them the affection that I am sure he feels. 

Now haven’t I put the cart before the horse? 
I intended first to tell you all about our voyage 
over, and then lead up to conditions here, but I 
have left the first to the last. 

In the first place poor Father was dreadfully 
seasick from the moment we got on the steamer, 
even before we started. There is something 
about the smell of machinery and rigging that 
makes him very ill. I tried to persuade him to 
stay on deck, but he would go to his stateroom, 
and there he stayed for the entire crossing. 

I was anxious to see the last of my country. 
(I realize now that United States is my country. 
I realized it the moment I knew I was to live in 
England.) I stayed on deck as we steamed out 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 287 

of the harbor and kissed my hand good-by to 
New York’s sky line and the Statue of Liberty. 
I felt very lonesome and very far away from all 
of my dear friends. There were letters down in 
my stateroom and I turned to go get them, when 
whom should I find at my side but George Mas- 
sie? Page, I was never more astonished in all 
my life! I was glad, too, very glad. All the 
lonesome feeling left me. He told me that you 
and the Tuckers knew all about his coming and 
approved, so that was enough for me. The ocean 
did not seem near so vast nor the sky so high 
up. 

Father was very miserable, so miserable that I 
had to call in the ship’s surgeon. The doctor 
made light of his malady but that did not make 
it gny easier to bear. I had to nurse him a great 
deal, and as he shared his stateroom with another 
man it was rather embarrassing for me to go in 
at night and attend to poor Father’s many wants. 
In fact, the man objected. 

Then it was I decided to tell Father of George 
Massie’s presence on board. Of course, he had 
no way to know my friend was there. He was 
very angry at first, but I had sudden courage and 
told him that we had not chartered the ship and 
other passengers had as much right there as we 
had, and that Mr. Massie was going abroad to 
serve the Allies. I also told him that George 
was willing to do anything for him he could, and 
would attend to him during the night when I 
could not come in his stateroom. Father became 
reconciled to George’s presence then, and he 
could hardly have kept up his anger after the 


288 


A HOUSE PAETY 


faithful way in which he nursed him for the rest 
of the journey. 

Of course, he did not have to be nursed all the 
time and we had much time on deck. The 
weather was perfect and I was not ill one mo- 
ment. I had a seat at the captain’s table and 
that dear old man saw to it that I was bountifully 
served. He was so kind to me, and to everyone 
in fact, but he seemed to think I needed especial 
care and my own father could not have been more 
attentive to me. 

I know that the news of our boat having struck 
a mine must have been a great shock to all of my 
friends. I am sure that George’s cablegram that 
all was well must have set your minds at rest, 
however. 

It happened just at dusk after a wonderfully 
calm day. The sea had been like a mill-pond all 
day and the sun very hot, so hot that we had 
sought the shade of the boats on deck. Towards 
sunset the wind had suddenly risen and the waves 
had begun to look very high. Of course all 
waves look high to me, as I am fully aware that 
I am the most timid person in all the world. It 
turned quite cold, so cold that I put on my heavy 
coat. We were almost at the end of our jour- 
ney. I had everything packed and in order; and 
at last we had persuaded Father to dress and 
come on deck. He had been much better for 
days and had been able to retain nourishment, 
which meant a return of his normal strength. 
He had even ventured down to dinner on that 
evening. 

We had hoped to arrive in Liverpool by eight 


WITH THE TTTCKEE TWINS 


289 


o’clock but we were proceeding very slowly and 
cautiously as the danger zone was filled with pos- 
sible disaster. The captain assured us that we 
would land sometime during the night but he ad- 
vised all of us to go to bed at the usual hour. 
Our voyage had been a veiy pleasant one. I 
had made many friends and was glad to feel that 
I had been able to throw off some of the miser- 
able shyness that has always been such a handi- 
cap to me. 

For several days we had been wearing life- 
preservers by command of the captain. Of 
course we felt confident that there was no use in 
it, but still we had to do it. George was too big 
for any of those furnished by the ship’s company, 
the straps refusing to meet; but I had pieced out 
the straps with some stout cotton cloth. 

We were at dinner on that eventful day, all of 
us looking very strange and bulky in our safety- 
first garb, when suddenly there was an explosion 
that shook all of us out of our seats. I was 
dreadfully frightened but managed to appear 
calm for Father’s sake, who because of his recent 
illness was much unnerved., 

“ Get your warm coats and any small hand 
baggage with your valuables!” the captain 
shouted, “ and report on deck immediately.” 

I tell you we obeyed without any demur! 
Many of the passengers hurried up, not going to 
their staterooms at all, but Father felt he must 
get his Gladstone bag and I had a small satchel 
all packed, which I took. I never heard so much 
shouting in all my life. The women were 
screaming and the men shouting. There was 


290 


A HOUSE PABTY 


only one child on board, a dear little girl of seven, 
and she and I were the calmest ones among the 
females. I was frightened at first but a sudden 
courage came to me. It may have been because 
the little girl slipped her hand in mine. Her 
mother had fainted and her husband was carry- 
ing her up on deck. The child’s name was Win- 
nie. She was a gentle little thing. We had 
made friends the very first day on board and had 
had many long talks together. Her mother was 
ill most of the time and Winnie and I had time to 
become very intimate. When she slipped her 
hand in mine, I knew that she expected me to 
look after her, and then it was God sent me 
strength to do it. 

The engines stopped the moment we hit the 
mine and the boat was listing so that when we got 
on deck we fomid a decided slant, so much so that 
it was difficult to walk. The life-boats were be- 
ing loaded and launched. I was shocked to see 
how some of the men crowded in. The sailors 
were a rude lot from all the quarters of the globe, 
and few of them showed any desire to save any- 
thing but their own skins. 

George Massie was everywhere. I was as- 
tounded at his powers of swearing, but he said 
afterwards that it was the only way to control 
people in times like that. He simply took com- 
mand of the boats, for which the captain had no 
time. The officers were a rather weak lot and 
one and all concerned for their own safety. 
They say so many of the good seamen have en- 
listed that many of the passenger ships are 
manned by weaklings. The captain was splen- 


WITH THE TUCKEB TWINS 291 

did and did his duty like the English gentleman 
he was. 

Of course at first we feared it was a submarine 
that had hit us. Its being a mine that we had hit 
made us much more comfortable. At least, we 
were not to fall into the hands of the Germans. 

“ The ship is sinking so slowly that I can as- 
sure you there is no immediate danger,” George 
had had time to tell Father and me. “ It is safe 
to wait for the last boat, so let me help launch 
these others first and then I can get into the boat 
with you. These sailors are too crazy to trust 
without a commander.” 

The captain had determined not to leave the 
ship until he was sure there was no chance of 
saving it. The chief engineer was to stay with 
him and several sailors volunteered. It so hap- 
pened that they were able to get into port on 
their own steam and we might have stayed safely 
on board, but of course the chances were that she 
would sink and it was deemed wiser for us to take 
to the boats. 

I wish all of you might have seen Father. He 
was very calm and brave after the first shock was 
over. He was not strong enough to help much 
but he was willing to help, and when the men 
crowded into the boats leaving women shrieking 
for places, he swore with almost as much fervor 
as George Massie himself. Do you know, Page, 
I know it sounds silly, but I believe I love my 
father more and am closer to him since I know he 
can swear a little? He swore to some purpose, 
too, as he called the selfish men such terrible 
names that two of them were actually abashed 


292 


A HOUSE PAETY 


and got out of the first boat to give their places to 
two women. 

To make the scene more dismal it had begun to 
rain, such a cold, penetrating rain! Poor little 
Winnie clung to me and I could hear her pray- 
ing: “ please God, save Mamma, and Papa, and 
me, and Miss Pore, and her papa, too, and the 
giant.” She always called George the giant. 
“ Don’t let us get drownded dead! ” 

We got off at last! Winnie and her mother 
and father were in the boat with us. That was 
something George Massie managed. He saw 
that the father, Mr. Trask, was a good, reliable 
man and could help with the boat, and he also felt 
that Mrs. Trask and Winnie would need me, 
which they did. There were five other men in 
the boat with us and one other woman : a nice old 
Irish chambermaid, who never stopped praying 
a single moment until we were safe on the high 
seas in our tiny boat with the waves dashing all 
around us and the rain pouring on us. 

I felt much safer on the steamer, although 
when we left her she had listed until her decks 
were at an angle of forty-five degrees. Of course 
the wireless had been busy sending appeals for 
help but we were three hours getting any. Mrs. 
Trask was very ill and had to lie in the bottom of 
the boat, where her husband and Father made 
her as comfortable as possible. Winnie sat in 
my lap and I wrapped her in a great rug that 
George had thrown around me. We kept each 
other warm under the rug and gave each other 
courage, too. 

The vessel that picked us up was not very gra- 


WITH THE TTJCKEK TWINS 293 

cious about it. They had picked up so many 
shipwrecked persons since the war began that it 
was an old story to them and not at all interest- 
ing. It was a fishing smack and smelled worse 
than anything I have ever imagined in the way 
of odors. Poor Mrs. Trask actually fainted 
again from the stench of fish offal. 

True to the cap tain's promise, we did land 
sometime during the night, but we were not safely 
in bed as he had hoped, but propped up in the 
foul little cabin of the fishing smack trying to 
choke down some vile black coffee that one of the 
men, not so hardened to shipwrecks as the rest, 
had humanely concocted for us. 

This is about all, dear Page! We got to bed 
when we reached Liverpool and stayed there for 
twenty-four hours. I kept Winnie with me, 
thereby saving the poor little thing the agony of 
seeing her mother die. Poor Mrs. Trask passed 
away the day after we landed. She was not 
strong enough to stand the shock and exposure. 
Mr. Trask is an Englishman and was going home 
to enlist and leave his wife and child with his own 
people. Plis wife thought it right but was evi- 
dently in the deepest misery over his decision. 
Maybe she was not sorry to die. I am so sorry 
for him and for the dear little girl. She is to 
come to Grantley Grange to visit me soon. 

I can never tell you how splendid George Mas- 
sie was. He was so brave and so determined. I 
did not dream he could command men as he did. 
He says it is football training that made him 
know what to do and how to do it. He is going 
to France next week to join the Red Cross as a 


294 


A HOUSE PAETY 


stretcher bearer, I think. I shall miss him ever 
so much but know it is right for him to help if he 
can. Service is in the air here in England. 
There is no more talk of who you are or what you 
own or what your ancestors have done. It is: 
What can you do? Then do it! 

It is a tremendous experience to be in the midst 
of this war. No one talks anything but war. 
There are no entertainments of any sort except 
the theatres. I believe they keep them open to 
cheer up the people. The fields are full of 
women; the factories are kept up by them; the 
trams and busses are run by them, — in fact they 
do anything and everything that men did before 
the war. 

You remember, do you not, how I was so 
afraid my clothes would look poor and mean and 
out of style? Well, on the contrary, for once in 
my life, I am better dressed than the persons with 
whom I come in contact. I am really ashamed 
to be so much better dressed than the other girls. 
It seems so frivolous of me. I know you can’t 
help smiling to think of what the others’ clothes 
must be. 

I am writing to my dear Tuckers, too, and if 
you read their letter and they read yours you can 
piece together what my life here is. Please send 
them on to Mary Flannagan when you have fin- 
ished reading them. I have not time to write 
another long letter just now. 

Besides singing to the soldiers, I am to teach 
music to the children in Father’s school. You 
can readily see how busy I am to be. 

I shall never cease to miss my dear friends in 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 295 

Virginia. Some day I hope to come back to 
America, but in the meantime I am going to do 
my bit here in England. Please write to me! 

Your devoted friend, 

Annie Poke. 


CHAPTER XXI 


A LETTER FROM GEORGE MASSIE TO PAGE ALLISON 

Paris y France. 

Poste Bestante. 

My dear Page: 

I left England last week after having 
stopped with the Pores at Grantley Grange for 
ten days or so. Say, Page, the old one ain’t half 
bad! If you could have heard him swear when 
the beasts crowded in the life-boats ahead of the 
women, you would have forgot the grouch we 
had on about the way he has always done Annie. 
Say, that man can swear! I wonder where he 
has kept it all these years. 

Of course, if a fellow ever is going to swear, it 
will be at a time like that, and if he doesn’t swear 
some, it is because he is dumb. It is the kind of 
time when some women pray and some weep and 
most men swear. They don’t mean anything, 
but it is just a kind of safety valve. Annie says 
I swore like a trooper, but I wasn’t conscious of 
it at all. It just popped out of me. You see I 
had to intimidate the men who were behaving like 
cads, and the only way I knew how to do it was to 
swear, unless it was to biff them one with the 
oars, and I did not want to do that except as a 
last resort. The swearing worked. 

296 


WITH THE TUCKEE TWINS 


297 


It was a very terrible experience and one I 
hope never to have to undergo again. It was not 
only terrible to think that all of those people 
might be at the bottom of the ocean in a short 
while, but it was almost worse to see the way 
people can be so scared that they think only of 
themselves. I reckon a fellow ought not to 
blame them. It seemed just blind animal in- 
stinct for self-preservation. My Annie was a 
trump. She was as calm and quiet as though 
shipwrecks had been an every-day experience 
with her. She looked out for a little child and 
its sick mother and helped people and quieted 
women and men, and after we had been afloat in 
our life-boat for hours and it was cold and rainy 
and the poor sick woman and an old Irish cham- 
bermaid began to despair and the kid began to 
cry, what should my Annie do but begin to sing 
“Abide With Me.” I have never heard her sing 
better than she did out in the middle of that dirty 
sea. It did all of us good, and before you knew 
it, a little fishing smack almost ran us down in 
the darkness and then had the decency to stop 
and haul us aboard. 

I reckon you think I’m pretty gaully to be say- 
ing “ my Annie ” so glibly. She’s not really my 
Annie but she is going to be if I can make good. 
Of course I know she is too young to make her 
give an answer to me yet, but this war is going to 
age all of us, and when it is over I’ll be a steady 
old man with white whiskers, and if Annie likes 
’em, I’m going to get her answer then. I don’t 
want to tie her up but leave her free. She might 
see a handsome Johnny that will put crimps in 


298 


A HOUSE PAETY 


my plans and I want her to take him if she likes 
him, but I tell you, Page, I’m going to pray 
every day and all day from now until the war is 
over that she will like me best. The old man 
likes me. It seems I earned his undying grati- 
tude by waiting on him when he was seasick and 
the doctor on board had made light of his ail- 
ment. I made out he was sick unto death and 
worked my fool fat self to a shadow fetching and 
carrying for him. Then when the explosion 
came and I did my best to keep order, he kind of 
cottoned to me more. I believe when I come 
back from the wars and beg an answer from 
Annie that His Nibs will be willing. 

He is much more attractive in his English set- 
ting. He really isn’t half bad. His sisters are 
making a lot over Annie and now he is kind of 
getting stuck on her himself. ’Tain’t so bad to 
be a woman in England now. Folks are think- 
ing a good deal of women, and I tell you they 
should do so. Annie says he has always been 
sore that she was not a boy. Looks as though he 
had a hunch that he might inherit the title some 
day. I call him the old man right to his face, as 
somehow I can’t school myself to say Sir Arthur. 
It is too story bookv for me. 

I am here in F ranee waiting to be sent out with 
the Red Cross. I may drive an ambulance and 
I may just be a stretcher bearer. I will do what- 
ever they see fit to put me to doing. There is 
plenty to do, they tell me, and they welcome 
every American who comes over with joy and 
gratitude. I wish we were in it as a nation. I 
believe we will end there, and if we do, I tell you 


WITH THE TUCKER TWINS 299 

someone else can drive the ambulance, as I mean 
to get in the game without a red cross on my 
sleeve. 

You don’t know what I feel towards all of you 
girls, all of Annie’s friends. I have lived to 
bless the day that I met you, although on that 
day I did anything but bless it. You remember 
how you bundled me up in the soiled clothes 
ready to send me to the laundry? I’ll never for- 
get it! Also, I’ll never forget that you and the 
Tucker twins never told the rest of the fellows 
about it. That was sure white of, you! Please 
put in a good word for me when you write to 
Annie, my Annie. 

Yours truly, 

George Massie. 


CHAPTER XXII 


A LETTER FROM PAGE ALLISON TO THE TUCKER 
TWINS 

Bracken ■, V a. 
Milton P. O. 

My dearest Tweedles: 

I m sending you letters from Annie 
and from Sleepy. I am awfully excited about 
Sleepy. He seems to be wide awake. Father 
says he will come through the war and be a dis- 
tinguished person of some sort, he believes. I 
think Annie’s letter is awfully interesting. Isn’t 
it fun for old Sir Arthur Ponsonby Pore to have 
won the love of the Lady Annie by swearing? I 
know your father will die laughing over it. 

I am up to my neck with Miss Pinkie Davis in 
the house, getting some sewing done so I won’t 
have to be worried with shirt-waists and things 
when we get to New York. Mammy Susan is 
still miffed with me for going, and I feel awfully 
bad about it. Isn’t it great that Mary can go, 
too? Do you reckon we’ll see Jessie Wilcox in 
New York? Not if she sees us first, I fancy! 
Four girls in a flat and that flat not so very swell 
wouldn’t appeal to Miss Wilcox, I think. 

Father is giving iron tonics right and left, and 
has made up a gallon of pump water with a beau- 
tiful pink vegetable dye in it for Sally Winn so 
300 


WITH THE TTJCKEB TWINS 


301 


she won’t have to die before he gets back. Poor 
J oe Winn is very sad that I did not let him know 
you were here on the last trip. I really forgot 
to do it. We were having such a wildly exciting 
time making our plans for New York that poor 
Joe never came into my head. 

It is so splendid that Father is going, too. If 
these people will only stay well until he can get 
started, then they can be sick all they want and 
have a doctor over from the crossing. There is a 
perfectly good doctor there, that is, a perfectly 
good doctor if one is prepared for death! 

Good-by ! I must stop and help Miss Pinkie. 
How I do hate to sew! To think in a few days 
almost I’ll be In New Yoke: With the Tucker 
Twins. 

Your best friend, 

Page Allison. 


the END 


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SLEEPY TOOK HER BY THE ARM AND CARRIED 
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IN BEING COERCED, Page 37. 



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